Broken Angels
by Knightfall1138
Summary: Many children were promised a unique future after their stay on Jump Zero, but not one day into their training, Kaidan Alenko finds out just how true those promises were.
1. Prelude: Atmospheric Design

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Prelude – Atmospheric Design

* * *

The transport ripped through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of flame and smoke in its wake as it continued upwards into the black. There, it mingled with the crumbling satellites and the oxidized remains of old spacestations that bubbled around Earth until its thrusters pushed it into a higher orbit.

The kinetic barriers flew up, repelling debris as the crew made the calculations for their up-and-coming jump to light speed.

One minute.

Two minutes.

The craft adjusted its heading, making for the destination of their first jump. Before it made full-burn, fire began to erupt from the rear thrust nacelles. Spinning end over end, the crew desperately tried to shut down the proper systems and bring themselves level again.

An element zero breach formed at the rear of the transport, effectively flinging the vessel down at an unmanageable speed. The craft cut back through the atmosphere, and began its mortal descent towards the ground below.


	2. The World Turns Without You

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter One – The World Turns Without You

* * *

As far as he could tell, he was the oldest student on the transport. He would have proceeded to ask some of the other kids their ages, but it seemed that everyone was intent on keeping to themselves for the remainder of the flight. Not that he could blame them. None of them had come together under normal circumstances.

"Kaidan Alenko?" a woman's voice sprouted up next to him.

Kaidan turned back to the aisle and found one of the attendants staring him down. "Yeah, that's me."

"Will you be needing anything to drink? It might be your last chance before we dock."

The boy shook his head. "No, thanks, I'm fine."

The attendant nodded indifferently and moved up to the next seat in the aisle.

Kaidan was actually quite thirsty, but he wasn't so sure he'd be able to keep down any fluids in his condition. He was only fifteen years old, and had expected to have a few more years upon him before he made his first trip off-world. Everything was new—and frightening almost as much as it was exciting.

Ever since he was little, listening to the stories his dad had told him about life out there, Kaidan had dreamed of seeing the black of space up close. What he was seeing now through the viewports of the shuttle was more than he had imagined. Though, it was hard to see much of anything through the mass effect field, but when they came to a stop to adjust coordinates, he was nearly-paralyzed by the untouched beauty of it all.

Deep space had always seemed romantic to him. That one frontier that couldn't be infected by pollution or destroyed by war. It just _was_—always had been, and always would be.

For that alone, Kaidan was grateful that he had been enlisted in this "academy." For being able to see a view of space that wasn't on a monitor or skewed by Earth's thickened atmosphere, he imagined he could deal with whatever challenges would come his way.

—

Back on Earth, the recruiters that had shown up at Kaidan's house after school said that he'd be going to a place called Gagarin Station to begin his education. After he and the other students were safely off-world, none of the grown-ups called their destination anything other than _Jump Zero._

Everyone had been mum as to the actual location of the facility. The only bit of information he was able to squeeze out of the Conatix representative was that it was somewhere within the vicinity of Neptune's orbit. They couldn't tell him anymore than that because, supposedly, "It would spoil the surprise."

When Kaidan finally caught sight of the spacestation outside the viewport, he was indeed surprised. The facility looked remarkably dull. In the darkness of space, the shuttle's landing lights and the station's external beacons revealed what looked like a giant steel cylinder. At its midsection, long umbilicals tethered a giant, glistening ring to the facility—which he assumed was the area for extra-gravitational activities he had read about.

_"Expect to be challenged up there, Kaidan. You have a special gift, and we intend on seeing that you reach your full potential."_

The shuttle used its maneuvering thrusters to bring it gracefully into the docking bay, which protruded out from one end of the cylinder. When the craft was safely mag-locked to the flooring, all of the lights in the cabin flickered on.

"Alright, students," an attendant began in a kindly tone. "Eyes forward and ears open. Very good. We will be initiating soft dock with Jump Zero shortly, but before we begin I will outline the basic rules of conduct." She pressed her hands together. "Violence will not be tolerated. We expect you all to treat each other with the same respect that you would like to receive in turn."

One of the kids snickered to himself off on the other end of the cabin. The attendant stopped her speech and stared at the boy until it was quiet again.

The attendant continued. "And you must treat your superiors with respect. They are here to teach you some important lessons that will follow with you for the rest of your lives. Any misconduct towards your superiors or other students will be grounds for punishment."

Half the children gulped at the word.

"Very good. Those are the basics, though your respective Quarter Masters will brief you on any further facility ethics codes."

From the ceiling of the docking bay, a huge metallic arm lowered down and slowly connected with the airlock of the shuttle. As it locked shut, the entire cabin shuttered. Some of the kids gripped their chairs a bit tighter.

The attendant smiled a wide, lipstick-red smile. "I hope you found your trip enjoyable. Conatix Industries hopes to hear of great things from each of you. Good luck!"

When the woman disappeared into the cockpit, the airlock hatch opened inwards on its own, and tall, bronzed and buff man with short, brown hair and a square jaw appeared in front of the students. He stood at the front of the cabin, as stiff as a board with hands behind his back. His eyes whipped back and forth to each kid in the room.

"I'd say good morning," he began, "but that isn't the case anymore. Earth is four-billion kilometers in that direction." He pointed towards the rear of the shuttle. "You aren't on their terms anymore. You'll be on _our_ terms. Jump Zero will be your homeworld from now on. If any of you kids have a problem with that, then it would be better for you to put it out of your mind. You don't need Earth, just as much as Earth doesn't need you. For as much as you miss it, it's continuing on without you. Just as you will continue on without it."

The man backed up towards the airlock. "You are to grab whatever personal effects you have brought with you and follow me into the lift. You will do this _now_."

It wasn't more than a minute before the children had their packs and belongings under their arms. They could sense the threatening tone of this man that spoke to them, and none of them wanted to challenge it.

Kaidan didn't have much more than a sack filled with clothes and the picture of his family in his back pocket. Even then, the Conatix reps said that nothing beyond entertainment for the flight to Jump Zero would be needed. Uniforms would be provided upon their arrival, hygiene essentials like soap and shampoo would be handed out as well. Pillows, blankets, and a bed would also be available in their own personal barracks.

But he didn't like the idea of going someplace far away without something familiar. He packed the sack of clothes on a whim as he was heading out the door. From what he was seeing, all of the other kids had the same idea.

They all piled into the lift that sat just beyond the airlock. By the time the shuttle was emptied, there was hardly any room to move. The door closed, the lift began to ascend, and the Kaidan began to wonder just what would be awaiting them on the other side.

Standing toe-to-toe with him was a beautiful young girl. She seemed a year or two his junior, and she had her arms wrapped around a lavender pack and a white teddy bear. Her skin was lightly tanned and her dark brown hair was tied back into a ponytail. Kaidan stared at her for a long time until—

"Is something wrong?" the girl asked, her eyes wide with confusion.

Kaidan caught himself. "Oh, no! I'm sorry."

"Are you sure? You looked like you were going to pass out."

"No, no, no." The boy was starting to blush with embarrassment. "I was just never too fond of…elevators. Yeah, they make me…They make me…stuff. I'm just not feeling too good." He made a mental note to slap himself for this display later.

"Is this your first time off-world?" she asked sincerely.

Kaidan nodded.

"Oh, okay. I remember my first time in space. I went with my dad on a cruise with some of his friends. A business trip or something. But I remember how scary it was." The girl sighed at the memory. "It gets easier. This time I wasn't scared at all."

Kaidan was relieved to talk to someone for once during this trip. It was relaxing. He was going to ask her some more questions, but he found the man starting down at him from across the lift. Deciding he'd better not push his luck, he shot a smile at the girl.

She smiled in return.

—

Inside Jump Zero, everything seemed to be made of the same material the outside was. Everything shined a bright, metallic shine and was covered in rivets to keep the paneling together. Every few meters, a poster or a picture of alien worlds was hung to break up the monotony; and at the end of almost every corridor was a small screen that showed the sun beginning to rise up from behind the earth. When the sun rose high enough, it whited-out the screen and slowly, in black letters of an elegant font, the logo for Conatix Industries appeared.

The slogan faded in just beneath it, reading:

"_Moving Humanity Forward_

_Faster Than the Speed of Life."_

Kaidan found the slogan entertaining enough to smile at it as the group passed it by.

The man led the children through a hatch that brought them into what appeared to be a waiting room. Comfy-looking chairs lined the walls and were spread out in columns across the floor.

"Listen up," the man called out. "Everyone can put their stuff down and rest here. Meanwhile, we're going to be calling you in for a physical examination—two at a time. Life in space can be rough after a few days. It doesn't get easier unless you have the proper nutrition regiment. I'll be coming in to check on you every few minutes, so don't let me catch any of you screwing around. Am I clear?"

He received various replies of agreement from the children.

"Yes."

"Yes, sir."

"Mmmhmm."

"Yeap."

And a sea of nods.

The man seemed pleased. "I heard someone in there get it right. It's 'Yes, sir' from now on. My name is Branson to anyone who needs to talk to me."

Branson turned to another hatch in the room and motioned to someone behind it. Into the room walked a doctor. His face couldn't be seen through the face mask, hairnet, and goggles, but the children could still sense something off with the man.

"Krystal Ankin and Douglas Dent," the doctor said.

Two of the kids sat up from their seats, picked up their belongings and began to head for the hatch.

Branson motioned for the two to stop. "You can leave your effects here in the room. We'll make sure and get them to your bunks after the examination."

The two kids looked at each other in resignation and left their bags on the floor.

The hatch closed behind them.

Kaidan had taken a seat next to the girl from the elevator. She was clutching her teddy bear tightly, and her eyes were trained on the hatch.

"Are you alright?" Kaidan asked sincerely.

The girl nodded. "That doctor scares me."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," he said, trying to reassure himself more than his friend. "Examinations are nothing. My mom made me take one before I came here. They just give you a shot or two and you're done."

The talk didn't seem to be helping. The girl buried her head in the teddy bear's face and pulled it tighter, as if it would be her saving grace.

"Hey," Kaidan tried to catch her attention. She finally looked up at him with worried eyes. "We're in this together, alright? Won't let anything happen to you."

As if to countermand what he had said, the doctor returned to the waiting room. "Dante Graves and Rahna Kaster."

Rahna took a long, stuttered breath, holding back tears. She finally sat up and put her bear on the chair next to her bag.

"Rahna's your name?" Kaidan called after her. The girl turned back and nodded. "My name's Kaidan. I'll see you on the other side, okay?"

Rahna returned a faint grin. "Okay." Then she was gone behind the hatch.

—

Kaidan dreamt that he was floating through empty space. The stars twinkled around him, but there nothing else he could say was familiar. He didn't bother to question what he was doing there; he was too entranced by the beauty around him. As he drifted through emptiness, sprawling nebulas and planets made of gold would flash into existence just before disappearing again.

Everything was beautiful for that one perfect moment.

Then he felt an intense pain crawl up his spine. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Reaching towards his back, he tried to grab at whatever it was that stabbing him but it kept slipping away under his skin. It moved up through his neck and spread throughout his body—down his legs, arms, and further up into his head.

The pain intensified. He screamed as loud as he could until the stars around him danced to his agony. When he finally heard his voice, it echoed as if it wasn't coming from his own mouth. It built with intensity until it hurt his ears. It got so loud that the black of space swayed with the vibrations.

Everything fell quiet. Then space around him shattered like glass and collapsed into a white light below him. He couldn't tell if he was falling as well or still floating in place. The light grew brighter, until its warm sting enveloped his body.

—

When Kaidan awoke, his eyes wouldn't focus. He could tell there was a dimmed light somewhere in the room, but he couldn't find the source of it no matter how hard he tried.

His arms were limp, his head felt heavy, and he could feel his mind trying to pull his senses back into the dream. He could still faintly hear his own scream from somewhere in the room.

Looking around, he strained as hard as he could to see what was around him. In the room with him were a mass of reclined medical beds. On each bed was a student he had seen before in the shuttle. None of them were awake, and all of them were covered in bandages—down their legs, arms, and around their heads.

Further inspection revealed that he too was bandaged up. He tried to reach over and pull them off, but his arms still wouldn't move.

"Hello?" he managed to wheeze out. "Is anyone there?"

None of the kids moved, but from somewhere he heard a weak voice call back to him. "You have to be quiet."

"What's going on," Kaidan asked, ignoring his instructions.

"Just keep pretending you're asleep. They come in here if they find you awake and they give you a shot. After that, you stop talking. I don't know what it does, but we shouldn't find out."

Kaidan was beginning to panic. "Please, tell me what's going on."

"…You have to be quiet."

He couldn't just lie down and accept what had happened to him. This wasn't right. All he wanted to do was run. He didn't care that he was on a spacestation. He just wanted out!

Kaidan gathered his strength and managed to regain control of his arms, but when he lifted them off the glass armrests of the recliner an alarm sounded. The tune wasn't loud or threatening, just a gentle humming noise that rose and fell until a group of doctors burst into the room.

He tried his best to get away, but he had nothing left. The white coats pinned him down to the recliner and stuck something into his neck.

The room began to dim, and he suddenly couldn't remember why he had been so scared.

—

His eyes went back and forth between the bunks. One at a time, making sure each face was committed to memory.

Kaidan had been excited to begin his training—at some point during the journey to Jump Zero. They had told him that he was special. One of a great few that could help the Systems Alliance play a bigger role in the workings of the galaxy.

_"They'll help you fulfill your highest potential."_

_"…great opportunity."_

_"You'll be respected by not only humanity, but the whole of Citadel Space."_

_"…respect will be something that you will have earned."_

_"…will ever treat you with anything other than respect…"_

_"…respect…"_

Kaidan couldn't shut the voices out. They were reassuring and gentle. They spoke to him of a future of real meaning amongst his ever-expanding species. It was a promise that he'd be able to rise above the monotony and become a shining light in dark space.

He couldn't shut the voices out. They had all been lies.

Once more, his eyes traced the bunks around him. On each lay a boy from the shuttle.

During the trip to Jump Zero, Kaidan had nothing better to do but look around the cabin of the shuttle. He counted seats, rows, windows…students. He had counted twenty-three kids in all, including himself. Sixteen boys and seven girls. After their medical examination, he counted only thirteen boys in the room with him.


	3. The Easiest Lesson Is Forgetting

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Two – The Easiest Lesson Is Forgetting

* * *

_**-Day Three-**_

"Get back!" the doctor screamed. "Get back, Alenko! Now!"

When Kaidan didn't respond, the man in white picked up the boy with his rubber gloved hands and pushed him up against the wall before rushing back to the scene behind him.

It had been three days. Three days of wandering in ignorance and steel shine. Kaidan's fellow students still hadn't made it a point to talk much. After what had happened during their first day at Jump Zero, he guessed they all felt the same way he did—violated and scared. They had all regained consciousness with numerous scars covering their body where plasmic stitches had been applied. One of the boys didn't seem to want to wake up with the others. He was hauled off rather quickly and Kaidan hadn't seen him since.

When the pain in their limbs wore off, Branson led them into a room that had been made up to look like a typical Earth-type classroom; complete with viewscreen and interactive desks. Other than that, the decorations that covered the rest of the room didn't seem to fit the context of what they were doing. As if someone quite literally grabbed a handful of random portraits and pinned them to the wall.

One was written in Spanish, though no one knew what it meant. It read, _"La muerte comienza con usted."_ Whenever Kaidan felt nervousness creep up on him, he looked to this portrait. He'd spend a few minutes trying to decipher it before Branson made his rounds.

Other than making introductions, their "teacher" was very light on words. His unflinching gaze typically communicated all that he needed to say at just the right time.

"I know you're wondering why you're here," Branson had said. "You have a lot of questions and I don't blame you. Just know what we've done here had to be done for your own safety. For your own health. Without the work we've done, there's a good chance that some of you would…get sick soon. Get real sick. And that's not good for anyone."

A boy, hardly older than ten, raised his hand in the air. Branson nodded in his direction to grant permission to speak.

"Mister Branson," the boy said with a youthful lisp, "I think I want to go home now."

Without blinking, the man replied, "You are home."

For the rest of that day, the boys were free to wander around their barracks. At the foot of each of their bunks were small, personal lockers. Inside were typical amenities like towels and a bar of soap. There were also uniforms within, but no sign of the personal effects they had brought with them on the shuttle.

"Knew they'd do that," one of the older boys sighed as he slammed his locker closed. "I knew they would…"

That was the extent of the conversation the boys would have during the first two days—brief grievances followed by a silence born of disappointment. And in this time that Kaidan had to himself, he'd lie on his bunk and wonder what the girl from the waiting room, Rahna, was doing right then. Since his awakening the day before, he hadn't seen anything resembling a female. He guessed that the girls were in separate barracks, but their complete absence so far disturbed him.

Day three found the boys in the extra-gravitational ring. After emerging from the umbilical tunnel, they all noticed that moving had suddenly become a chore. Even the hair on their heads felt heavier, and those with lengthy locks made futile attempts to push their now-straightened bangs out of their eyes.

"Alright, listen up," Branson said. "The circumference of this ring represents one and a half kilometers. As part of our initial training regiment, I want all of you to make this round once. Take all the time you need, but anything less than a steady jog will not be tolerated. We need to get you used to the conditions that you'll be facing while on Jump Zero, or else things will start to get uncomfortable for the lot of you real quick around here."

A few of the younger boys were already moaning. A quick look from Branson put a stop to that.

"Alright," their teacher called out, clapping his hands together. "Get going! Move! Move! Move!"

The students reluctantly began jogging through the circular tunnel that made up the ring. The ground was slightly padded, which made it easier for their feet to grip the floor, but it didn't help the fact that they were already tired. The increased gravity in the ring was taking its toll.

"This is stupid." It was the same older boy who had complained about their personal effect going missing. He increased his pace until he was along side Kaidan. "What kind of 'academy' is this supposed to be, anyway? I thought we were just gonna learn about…I don't know…_math_ or something."

Kaidan shrugged, trying to keep a steady jog. The downward curve of the tunnel was beginning to wear on his mind and make him a bit nauseous. "I honestly didn't know what to expect."

"Yeah," the boy sighed. "Moment of weakness, I guess. They kept saying how special I was. Over and over. 'You're so special, kid.' I actually started to believe it." He held out a hand to Kaidan. "I'm Dante, by the way. Dante Graves."

It took all of Kaidan's concentration to grab the boy's hand on the first try. "Kaidan Alenko. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too," Dante replied. His demeanor seemed to brighten more and more as more words were spoken. "Have you ever ran this far?"

"In physical education, we had to run a kilometer once a week. But this…"

"I had to do that stuff in school, too." Another boy around Kaidan's age jogged up into the group. He was a little husky, but managed to keep up just fine. "I never got what the point of making everyone run around was. Most grown-ups just sit behind a terminal. Don't need to be able to run a kilometer for that…Oh, the name's Billy Jenkins."

Dante scoffed. "I wouldn't have come here if I wanted to sit behind a terminal. My dad's an operator on a stardock. Went with him one time and I fell asleep watching him."

"Really?" Billy responded. "My mom used to work on a stardock before we moved to Eden Prime. What was his name?"

Kaidan started to lose interest in the conversation. His focus returned to the run and trying to keep himself from panicking over the unusual conditions he had been forced into. Talking to another human being for once had helped, though. He looked behind him and found that the younger kids were starting to disappear behind the curvature of the ring. Of course they'd fall behind with shorter legs, but he didn't think they'd have any trouble with the run. He had known kids their age that could endure twice what they had just been assigned.

"—I bet they just sent them home. Couldn't cut it, I guess." Billy's voice faded back into Kaidan's mind.

"What did you say?" Kaidan asked after taking a deep breath.

"Those other kids."

"The kids that disappeared." Dante clarified. "Whatever they did to us when we got here, I don't think the other kids passed the test."

"And you…Do you really think they just sent them home?" Kaidan seemed hopeful that he might have just found a way back to Earth. He had faked being sick plenty of times to get out of school—maybe that's all it would take to get out of Jump Zero.

"What else would they do?" Billy snickered through his teeth. "Take us out back and make us step-out?"

"What's 'step-out'?" Kaidan asked innocently.

Dante threw his arms up. "I hear that's how they used to perform executions a long time before they found the Martian ruins. They'd shove you in an airlock and make you 'step-out.'"

Kaidan grimaced at the thought of this. He had thought of going into space for many years, but hardly thought about the effects of doing it without some sort of containment. The images didn't help his nausea.

Billy patted Kaidan on the back. "Don't worry, kid, they don't do it anymore."

"But that's terrible!"

"You gotta watch more movies. They show that kind of stuff all the time."

Dante rolled his eyes. "Maybe in the age-restricted movies."

"Still movies. My brother and I watch them all the time," Billy huffed and wiped away the beads of sweat forming on his brow. "Anyways, I'm sure they're fine. You'll see. I'm gonna do all I can to get out of here, and when I do, I'll shoot you a line from Earth."

"Cause you have our number up here. Right. I'm pretty sure you're stuck up here with the rest of us until…whenever."

"You should see me back on Earth. I can get out of anything." Billy coughed a few times but hardly lost momentum in his jog. "That's probably why my parents sent me here. No school could hold me."

Kaidan looked over. "Why was school so bad?"

Billy held his head high. "They try and put you in a box. It's never that easy, though. The galaxy's too big of a place. They can't—" He stumbled a bit and started coughing again. "—They can't tell you who you are…"

Billy stopped running altogether and hunched over where he stood. He clenched a fist over his mouth as he coughed, but those coughs suddenly turned to hacks.

Dante patted Billy's back. "You gonna be okay, man?"

"GAH!" Billy's entire body contorted violently. His hands were stretched out widely and his fingers wouldn't stop moving in random motions. "It hurts…" he mumbled.

Kaidan didn't know what to do. He had never seen anyone act in this way in his entire life, and couldn't help but be moved into a state of panic. Dante didn't have any problems dealing with the situation. The boy held Billy in his arms and shouted down into the corridor for Branson.

"It's alright…" Billy muttered through the tears and the coughs. "It's alright…It's like I said…ungh…They can't hold me…" He put on a weak smile when he saw Branson moving quickly through the ring. "I'm going…home…"

In one more spastic jerk, Billy fell to the ground—hitting the metal flooring headfirst.

When Branson finally reached the scene, he said nothing, but quickly, and mechanically, picked up Billy's limp body up into his arms. He pulled a small handheld device from his belt and pressed it into the boy's neck. An electronic ringing noise grew with intensity until Billy's body convulsed again.

Dante reluctantly moved away from the scene when he saw the younger boys approaching. He ran to the lead runner and set up a blockade to keep the other kids from seeing.

Kaidan, however, was still standing in shock. With his hands covering his mouth, he watched as blood began pouring out of Billy's ears and eyes. He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but it wasn't long at all when more white coat doctors came sprinting out through the nearest umbilical corridor.

"Get back!" the doctor screamed. "Get back, Alenko! Now!"

When Kaidan didn't respond, the man in white picked up the boy with his rubber gloved hands and pushed him up against the wall before rushing back to the scene behind him.

The doctors quickly went about scanning Billy's body with various instruments until one of them made a hand signal and the rest carted the body back through the corridor.

Branson stood silently, staring at the empty corridor with an absent gaze. Not a muscle on the man's ripped physique moved a bit, Kaidan could have sworn by this. He simply stood as still as stone until one of the kids from down the hall began to cry. Without hesitation, he turned to face his students.

"You will be challenged in many ways during your time here," Branson offered, flatly. "The ride will not be a perfect one. You will see many things that you'll wish you hadn't." He walked closer to the group. "But believe me when I tell you this—compared to the challenges you have ahead of you, the easiest part of your stay here will be to forget what you've seen."

Without skipping a beat, Branson signaled to his students to follow, and he led them back to their barracks.

In his bunk, Kaidan repeated his teacher's words over and over in his mind. The tears in his eyes told him that watching what happened to Billy would be with him the rest of his life. But as the weeks began to fall away from Jump Zero, Kaidan looked back at all that he had endured and realized, to his horror, just how truthful Branson could be.


	4. Dousing The Lights At The Tunnel's End

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Three – Dousing The Lights At The Tunnel's End

* * *

_**-Month Two-**_

Since arriving at Jump Zero, Kaidan had begun to get used to the physical conditioning that Branson so indifferently put the boys through. There was no anger or strictness that lined the man's tone when he burst into the barracks every morning—it was just…Branson. No one dared to find out what would happen if they tested their teacher's boundaries, because no one knew quite what the man would do to them as punishment.

But exactly two months after the students' arrival to the facility, Branson's daily wake-up calls stopped. Most of the younger kids continued to sleep in, while the older boys, Kaidan included, sat up in their bunks—scared out of their living wits.

"Think we did something wrong?" Felix, a thirteen-year-old, asked. "Maybe we made him mad?"

Dante hadn't taken his eyes off the door since waking. "He seems like the type that would tell us if we were in the wrong. But I don't know."

"We've done everything he's asked of us," Kaidan chimed in. "All that running. All that lifting. None of us fell behind."

Another boy around Kaidan and Dante's age, William, raised his hand from his bunk. "Maybe we just didn't try hard enough. Ever think of that?"

"Why would that make a difference?" Kaidan asked.

"Think about it. He never encouraged us to do the work. He just dropped us in the room and said, 'Do it.' Maybe he wanted to see if we could improve. Did any of us ever try and go above and beyond?"

The room was silent.

"I don't know about that," Dante replied. "Like I said, he seems like the type that would let us know this stuff."

Kaidan snickered. "I don't even know what type of guy Branson is. I stopped trying to guess weeks ago."

"We should always be on our toes, Kaid. We've been through a lot but, God help me, I still don't even know what exactly we're doing here. That alone should keep the fear in us until we're back home."

"You don't have to worry about me being afraid, Dante." Kaidan chuckled nervously. "I haven't had anything but nightmares since I got here. I'm just saying it's impossible to know exactly what we're dealing with in any case. We don't even know what really happened to Billy."

"He's dead," said Dante, bluntly.

"But how? Because of whatever they did to us during our physical? None of us have really questioned that at all."

Felix eased back under his blankets. "I think I'd rather not know what happened."

The door into the barracks hissed open. At this sound, every boy in the room jumped out from their bunks and stood at attention in the middle of the room. Branson stepped through the door in his usual sauntering manner. He let the barracks sit in silence for a minute before finally speaking.

"Two months ago, all of you arrived here at Jump Zero with the promise of becoming something unique," he began. "Becoming something this galaxy has never seen before. I don't think I have to tell you that exaggeration is a common tool that Conatix Industries uses on the daily to recruit young men like yourselves into its dealings. But mark my words—the galaxy has seen many with abilities such as yours, but never coming from humanity.

"Over the next three years, all of you will be trained to deal with your new abilities as they surface. What you've experience so far in the past two months has been to acclimate you with the, at times, harsh conditions that training on this station will involve. _Acclimation_, that's what it was. Your real training begins today."

—

Branson led the boys back into the schoolroom. He usually brought the students to this place if he was going to introduce a new kind of exercise curriculum. But at this point, none of them knew what to expect.

When the class was seated, their teacher stood at the front of the room with hands gripped behind his back, as if he was waiting for something. Kaidan began to lose interest immediately and turned his focus on the poster with the Spanish lettering. _"La muerte comienza con usted."_ It bothered him so much that he couldn't understand it. Maybe that's why he found it so fascinating at the worst of times—it was a very pleasant distraction.

Branson turned to face the door and his arm snapped up into a military salute. The woman who stepped into the classroom was the most non-threatening creature that most of the boys had ever seen. She was young, if hardly into her thirties. Her hair was tied back tightly into a bun—which only accentuated her piercing blue-eyed gaze even though it was shielded by the spectacles perched upon her nose. Her lips were bright red, with the faint sign of a beauty mark resting only a centimeter up the side of her cheek.

William turned his head slightly in Kaidan's direction and raised his eyebrows a few times in a very excited manner. Yet, even though he was the only one betraying his internal gawking, all of the boys in the classroom were impressed by the woman's beauty. This put them at ease substantially. Some of the kids even relaxed in their seats a little.

The woman nodded to Branson. "Thank you, captain, I can take it from here."

"Yes, ma'am." Branson saluted her again before exiting the room, without even offering a passing glance to his students.

"Right then," the woman said. "As Captain Branson may have already informed you, today will represent the beginning of the next phase of your training. Now that you've all have had the chance to become accustomed to this station as well as your implants, each of you will be educated on how to properly harness your abilities."

The woman stopped herself and raised a white-gloved hand up to her lips. "Oops! I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? My name is Lieutenant Lola Veratryn. For the next year, I will be the instructor of this class' _Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training_. This is the name that we have given your lesson plan. BAaT will be your guiding light. Your new beginning. Treat what you learn with the respect it deserves, and you will emerge from Jump Zero that much better for it."

Lola's lips parted into a sparkling-white smile. "Now, first things first." She reached down below the instructor's desk at the front of the room and produced a small metallic briefcase. Her fingers moved across a keypad on the front of the case until it popped open. Gracefully, she swiveled it around to reveal its contents to the rest of the class.

"Each of you will be fitted with these blue bracelets," she explained. "The color represents your team and the bracelets will allow you access to your designated section of Jump Zero. From now on, you will have unlimited access to the mess hall, washrooms, barracks, and training rooms. But with this new freedom comes new responsibilities.

"The continuation of your training is crucial. Therefore, you will be required to spend at least twenty-one hours a week in the training room performing the exercises that Captain Branson has taught you. And lastly, two days a week, you will all be subjected to special trials to begin drawing out your abilities. Your first trial will begin today."

Lola picked up the briefcase and went through the classroom, row by row, and made sure each of the students were fitted with one of the blue bracelets. When she was satisfied, she returned to the head of the class. "Very good! Now if you would please follow me."

The class slowly got to their feet, with Kaidan being the last out of the room. As they followed Lola Veratryn through hatches and passages that none of the kids had noticed before, Kaidan couldn't help but try and slip the blue bracelet off of his wrist.

—

When the boys entered the last blackened hallway, the fluorescent lights overhead suddenly shifted to a blue color. Lola led them past several heavy looking hatches until she stopped on the fifth. She placed her hand on a glass panel near the door, which lit up green at her touch. The door whined loudly as it slid open and was finished off by a hydraulic hiss.

"Everyone inside." Lola's tone had suddenly degraded to something that seemed like a sweet demand. Though, her face didn't display any harshness, the change rekindled a sense of fear within Kaidan.

The door whined shut when everyone was inside. The room was dark and plain like the hallway they had just left, but there were a series of seven small hatches across the west wall.

"Since we only have twelve students, we'll be able to finish this trial in two runs," their teacher began. "Seven of you will go first, with the last six going next. After you have—"

Lola stopped when she saw Felix raise his hand. She nodded to him. "Mmhmm? What is it?"

"Well…" Felix fumbled with his words under the pressure. "Well, see…Branson never quite explained what exactly we're going to be doing here. And I was wondering what…why we're doing all of this?"

It was the question that Kaidan knew everyone in the room wanted answered. They had kept quiet out of fear of everything. Fear of Branson. Fear of the white coats. The fear that they all might end up disappearing like Billy or the kids from the first day, and never come back.

But this woman seemed genuinely kind. Her beauty and perky demeanor made this almost indisputable. Kaidan understood this as the reason Felix spoke up, because he felt at ease for the first time since their arrival.

It was an easy mistake to make.

"We're here to ensure you have a future," Lola snapped. "What's so difficult to understand? Without the L2s you've been fitted with, you'd have nothing. Conatix Industries has given you this chance to have a life—and we expect greatness from you in return. Nothing short of that will be tolerated."

She motioned Felix over to one of the hatches. The boy stood still, nervously stealing glances from all of his fellow classmates before reluctantly moving towards the woman.

"This will be your first trial." Lola's voice carried loudly through the room. She turned and pressed a button on the wall, and all seven hatches upon it opened. Behind each was a small tunnel, from which a long metal slab with harnesses began to protrude outwards. When the slabs were completely exposed, they mechanically shifted vertical.

"Stand there," Miss Veratryn demanded, pointing a finger to one of the slabs.

Felix turned once more to his class as he obediently approached the harnesses. When he was close enough, Lola physically moved him into position, strapping his legs, chest and neck to the slab, but leaving his arms free.

"This phase of your trials will help develop your ability to manipulate objects," Lola said. "In each tunnel is a lighted bullseye that will descend towards your chest at random intervals. Your task is to ensure that the target does not descend past a certain point. If it does…you will know." She pointed to the group. "Why don't the older boys show us how it's done?"

Kaidan felt his heart sink. He looked around desperately, as if he wasn't in the running instantly to be chosen. William was looking back at him, frightened. Dante, on the other hand, looked on as if nothing had happened, and he was the first to approach the next slab.

Following their friend's lead, Kaidan and William weren't far behind. Lola chose the next to boys at random, and it wasn't long at all until they were all restrained to their respective slabs.

"Good luck, boys," Lola purred. "Branson will be waiting for you on the other end of the tunnel when your trial is finished. Just make sure and keep your focus in check. It'll most definitely improve your score."

She pressed the button on the wall once more and Kaidan, as well as the other six boys, were brought horizontal in the air. He started to panic and reached up to his neck harness in a futile attempt to free himself. Before he even figured out how trapped he was, the darkness of the tunnel had already consumed him.

The slab came to a stop, and the tunnel sealed shut.

Kaidan was blind in the dark. All he could hear was his own beating heart and frantic breaths.

"Hello!" He called out loudly into the tunnel. "Dante! Felix! Can anyone hear me?"

Not even an echo answered his cries.

A moment later, a small light flickered on, and a red and white bullseye appeared above him. It sat there for the longest time. Long enough for Kaidan to finally calm down and start counting the rings upon it; but a low humming noise rose up, and the bullseye began to descend towards him slowly.

He was already having trouble remembering the directions Miss Veratryn had given him back in the room. What was the point of all this? He growled and struggled in his harnesses has he forced himself to recall the speech.

_Stop the target!_ his mind screamed at him.

Kaidan breathed a sigh of relief, but that didn't change the fact that he couldn't even reach the bullseye to stop it! His freed arms reached up as far as he could stretch him, but it was still a meter out of his reach.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a glowing line on the wall to his left. He assumed that was the _point of no return_ that their instructor had informed them of. Again, he reached out until the strain in his muscles flared up into an intense pain. Nothing could be done. He couldn't even reach the line that represented the bullseye's destination.

Feeling the hope draining from him, Kaidan settled back down on his slab and cried as the target drew ever closer to the line. He didn't want to find out what would happen when the border was crossed. He didn't even want to think of all the ways his failure could ruin him.

That bullseye had to stop. He wished it to stop. Whispered at it. Begged it.

He reached out once more and threw all of his thoughts and fears up into the air above him. The target seemed to slow, but he couldn't tell if it was the darkness or his mind playing tricks on him.

"STOP!" Kaidan screamed into the tunnel at no one in particular. "Please! STOP!"

His consciousness retreated back into his mind—passing through old memories of happier times back on Earth. The images of birthdays, school days, sick days, any moment that made him smile was thrust forth in front of his eyes. They made him forget, at just the right moment, when the target had breached the line.

An electrical shock coursed through Kaidan's body—tensing up every muscle he possessed and sending him thrashing against his harnesses.

As the arcs of static discharge began to skitter across the slab, Kaidan drifted off into unconsciousness, and he did his best not to resist.


	5. Interlude: Shakedown Run

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Interlude: Shakedown Run

* * *

"Down you go!" Kaidan shouted as he pumped another round into the approaching geth soldier.

Shepard was close behind with her assault rifle, cutting down an attempted flank at their knees. The synthetics doubled over onto the ground, doing their best to raise their weapons once more, but the Commander emptied the rest of her clip into their heads. The creatures convulsed where they lay, sending out a flurry of sparks from their bodies as they died.

The last geth took cover behind a stone pillar and blind fired with near-deadly accuracy.

"What do you think, Commander?" Kaidan asked, taking cover next to Shepard. "Wait for him to run out of bullets? I have cards in my back pocket." His tone hinted that he was joking. Shepard couldn't help but smile through her visor.

"Where does your sense of humor go when we're on the Normandy?" she asked. "The second the containment scan is over, the regulation bug bites you in the ass."

The Sentinel shrugged. "Would it be hard to believe that it's more stressful back on the ship for me?"

The look that Shepard returned was marked with sympathy. "No," she said, flatly.

She had read his file. Kaidan forgot this sometimes.

"The open air is quite a thing," he mused as a bullet tore a chunk out of their rocky cover. "Anyways, remind me to tell you my story about the asari with these giant spectacles I saw. I won't let regulations get in the way, I promise."

Shepard feigned excitement. "Oh, well in that case…" Without looking, she pulled a pin from a grenade and threw it back over their cover without looking. "Take care of that, would you?"

"Cover me!" Kaidan shouted. Without wasting time, he broke cover and looked for the grenade on the ground. As Shepard put covering fire on the geth soldier, the Sentinel locked his gaze on the armed grenade. Knowing he wouldn't have a second chance, he did his best to disregard how exposed he was and put all of his focus on the explosive.

His arm lit up a faint blue color as the mass effect field formed around him. With just the right amount of energy, he tossed the field as the grenade, sending it rolling towards the synthetic. Before the creature could reach down and throw it back, it exploded only a centimeter away from its grasp. The top half of the geth soldier's body rained down in small pieces around Kaidan and Shepard.

"Why would you do that?" Kaidan asked incredulously as he recharged some of his empty clips.

"Never had a good throwing arm," Shepard joked. "No, it's because synthetics have very good reflexes. If I had thrown it directly, the chances were good that it would have just caught it and thrown it back. Rolling it increases the odds of the right target getting smeared."

Kaidan's head drooped in mock disappointment. "Should've remembered that."

"Well…" Shepard looked over to the crater that had been a synthetic at one point. "…Seems like you did remember. Anyways, you didn't have the grenades. That's my job."

The smile that Shepard presented to Kaidan was an event that he couldn't believe had just taken place. Here they were, on a human colony occupied by a synthetic race that disappeared centuries ago. They had been dropped off with one Corporal Jenkins and a turian Spectre in the hopes of finding lost Prothean technology—and during the search, had lost Jenkins in a brutal crossfire.

Yet, Shepard still managed to smile. Kaidan couldn't help but try and wonder how she was able to do it. He thought that if he was able to shrug off the darkness around himself as she did, then maybe those years at Brain Camp wouldn't have been as bad as they were.

It was nice to wonder about anything that could have brightened that dark chapter of his past.


	6. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Four – Out of Sight, Out of Mind

* * *

_**-Month Three-**_

He was starting to get the hang of it. After training to the breaking point every chance he got for the last month, it was becoming easier and easier to sharpen his focus. To let it cause the needed reaction within his body so he might bend the very fabric of space around him.

This wasn't how Kaidan had ever envisioned spending an afternoon.

"Are you ready, Kaid?" William asked. "You realized this will probably only hurt you and humor us."

Kaidan was laid out across the floor of the training room with his arms up above his chest. His muscles were relaxed for the most part, though he could feel the fibers along his internal implants tensing with energy. He felt he was ready, but had learned not to place much faith in his feelings. His mind often said 'Yes' even when his body wasn't prepared.

Felix hunched over to look Kaidan in the eye. "Just make sure you don't pass out this time. That was embarrassing having to haul your sorry butt out of the trial room."

"Well, at least I didn't wet myself," Kaidan shot back without losing his focus.

"Hey!" Felix's cheeks went red. "It was a natural reaction to the shock we received. It happened to all of us."

"Alright, there, Felix. All's I know is my uniform was very dry when I woke up."

The group around Kaidan burst into laughter.

"What are you all laughing at!" Felix accused the lot. "We were all in the same yellow submarine, you pansies!" He turned to Kaidan. "Now I just want to drop this on you for the fun of it."

Felix and William were both holding onto either side of a ten-pound weight, and let it hover about arm's length over Kaidan's chest. All of the kids on Blue Team had come to the consensus that ten pounds walked the line between minimum physical damage and maximum incentive to repel it. It hadn't been easy to find that balance, though—several broken ribs and bruised chests later.

"I'm ready," Kaidan said calmly. "Drop it."

Felix and William smiled widely and winced as the ten pounds of solid steel slipped from their fingers. Some of the younger boys shrieked as they pressed their hands over their eyes in fright.

Kaidan reached out and forced the dark energy out through his arms, which pushed against the block of steel as it fell towards him. When no one heard him groan immediately, they all tuned back into the scene before them and cheered loudly.

All ten pounds of the weight were hovering over Kaidan's chest without aid. The only thing keeping it elevated was the dark blue mass effect field surrounding it.

"That's how you get it done!" Felix cheered. "That's how Blue Team gets it done! Am I right?"

Another wave of cheers rose up and it wasn't long before everyone was jumping around. The excitement was palpable. Kaidan hadn't felt such an intense feeling of pride for a very long time. It felt really good. Good enough for him to lose focus, and the weight began to slowly descend.

In a panic, Kaidan tried to focus his energy again, but over-compensated and managed to thrust the chunk of steel all the way up to the ceiling. It bounced off the metallic paneling, making a loud thump and a deep dent, and then fell back down towards the ground. Exhausted from the extra push, Kaidan didn't have enough time to roll out from under the falling object as it hurdled back towards him.

"Oh, no…"

—

Blue Team carefully made their way to the infirmary, with Kaidan raised up in the air like a heroic soldier returned from battle. Most of the younger kids couldn't stop cheering over his accomplishment, but the older boys knew better.

"You're never gonna live this one down, Kaid," Dante said, snickering. "I'm sorry to say that, but it's true."

Kaidan forced a laugh. "Let's just hope I live though this."

"Ah, you'll be fine," William chimed in. "It's just a few broken ribs. A quick set, a few plasmic stitches, and you'll be ready to screw up again."

"Thanks. I needed the boost in confidence."

"You're welcome." William replied gleefully and patted Kaidan on the head.

The group rounded the corner, past a Conatix Industries advertisement screen, and into the infirmary. The room was, unsurprisingly, as plain as the rest of the station. Aside from the steel paneling, there were only a few white cabinets, some medical beds, and a medi-gel dispenser.

Dante sighed. "It figures, you bought yourself one of the few injuries that medi-gel can't fix."

At the boy's voice, a blue hologram of a young human girl flickered to life in front of the Team's eyes. She stood in a stiff and stationary position until her programming loaded. A red cross formed across her breast and her hand moved down to her hip, leaving her remaining hand free to wave into feminine emotes as she talked.

William stood in inspired awe. "Why the heck don't we come down here more often?"

_"Jump Zero Blue Infirmary,"_ the hologram began. _"Please state your name and ailment."_

Felix threw on a mockingly deep voice. "My name's Kaidan Alenko. I'm a proper sissy who needs a blankey and a band-aid on account of my gimp superpowers."

William chimed in. "And I could use some holographic loving."

The Team broke out into a hearty laughter, leaving Kaidan to slump back in his hammock of human support.

_"Invalid request,"_ the hologram replied. _"Please rephrase your statement and try again."_

Before anyone could perpetuate the joke at his expense, Kaidan shouted at the hologram, "Kaidan Alenko! Broken ribs!"

_"Acknowledged."_ The hologram nodded. _"A medical officer will be with you shortly. Please lie down on the nearest medical bed and await medical attention."_ With that, the virtual nurse disappeared.

"Don't go…" William muttered.

"Alright," Dante called out, "let's get him on the bed before he hurts himself again."

Though Blue Team had spent the entire walk tearing Kaidan down, they sat him down on the medical bed as carefully as a mother would a son. He was family—and in this new world where nothing could be trusted to behave according to first impressions, each other was all they could place faith in. So they did joke and tease, but no more than they would if anyone else on the Team had been injured.

They knew nothing could violate that bond.

"Take care in here, bud," Dante said, ruffling Kaidan's hair. "Don't start hitting on the hologram. Head back to the barracks as soon as you're done."

William threw up his arms. "There's a reason, right? There's gotta be a reason they made the hologram to look like a stripper. And I'm gonna find it!" With newfound determination, he stormed out of the room. One by one, the rest of the Team followed, each saying their goodbyes until Kaidan was the only one left.

Kaidan breathed deep of the sense of pride that he felt. Only briefly, though. Flexing his chest too much still hurt like nothing he'd ever experienced. He wasn't even scared when the Jump Zero white coat entered the room from a hatch on the other end of the room.

"Mister Alenko," the doctor acknowledged, drawing out the boy's name. "Broken ribs, I understand?"

Kaidan nodded. "From the training room."

"You kids." He shook his head. "Remarkable progress from the lot of you. Blue Team has definitely been shaping up rather nicely. Broken bones aside." The doctor grabbed a small gun with a nozzle attached to the barrel. "Don't worry, it just dispenses medi-gel. Gonna have to perform some minor surgery to heal the bones."

Kaidan nodded again. He didn't like speaking with any of the white coats out of brutal disrespect for them. It seemed that every time something terrible happened in the station, a white coat wasn't too far away. So he begrudgingly accepted the help, but that didn't mean he was inclined to converse with the man.

The doctor used the gun to dispense a strip of blue medi-gel onto Kaidan's bruised chest. When he was satisfied with the amount, he used a cotton pad to spread the gel evenly over his skin.

"Okay. I'm just going to give that a few minutes to let it effectively numb the damaged area. I'll be back to deal with you then." The white coat smiled through his facemask before disappearing back through the hatch.

Looking at his "battle-scar", Kaidan could see the medi-gel already being absorbed by his skin. The sensation it caused could only be described as a million nerve-endings crying out in terror, before being suddenly silenced. Before long, he couldn't even feel the pain in his chest anymore. Breathing wasn't so much a chore either, but he didn't want to take the chance of hurting something else by ignoring what had happened to him now that the pain was gone.

The infirmary was already getting old. Minutes started to tick by, which didn't help Kaidan's growing boredom. He just wanted this operation to be done and over with so he could return to the comfort of his barracks.

"Hello?" he called out towards the hatch.

Reacting to his voice, the hologram near the entrance flickered into existence again. _"Jump Zero Blue Infirmary. Please state your name and ailment."_

Kaidan's brow raised in confusion. "I'm already…I'm already being helped…_ma'am_."

"_Invalid request. Please rephrase your statement and try again."_

At that time, perfectly functioning holograms were scarce; reserved only for high priority military facilities and fully-funded hospitals. This virtual nurse's apparent lack of anything resembling competent craftsmanship worried Kaidan. Until he remembered William's parting words.

Although he didn't mean to follow his friend's rather perverted ambitions verbatim, exploiting the hologram's programming did hold some promise, however.

"Hologram," Kaidan said to the faux nurse, "state primary programming." He didn't expect it to work, but was pleasantly surprised when the hologram began talking.

"_Conatix Industries Artificial Intelligence Unit—Model 42 dash A. Primary function: To instruct, verbally aid, and assist students of Jump Zero in treating their medical needs."_

It was a start. So much information spilling out of the unit meant that some basic commands might prove to yield some interesting results. After staring at the hologram's artificially flawless body for a moment, his curiosity finally overruled his fear of the white coat walking in on him.

"Hologram," Kaidan began, still not too sure what to call the thing. "Recount all previously recorded ailments from other students on Jump Zero."

Without hesitation, the hologram spoke, "_Recorded ailments on Jump Zero are as follows:_

_"Broken ribs."_

_"Heart attack."_

_"Heart attack—fatality."_

_"Broken nose."_

_"Broken humerus."_

_"Broken vertebrae—fatality."_

_"Heart attack."_

_"Anxiety Attack."_

_"Hypotension—fatality."_

_"Hypotension—fatality."_

_"Heart attack."_

_"Concussion."_

_"L2 rejection—fatality."_

_"L2 rejection—fatality."_

_"L2 rejection—fatality."_

_"L2 rejection—fatality."_

The hologram continued down the list in her pleasant tone of voice for several minutes until the white coat meandered back into the room. When he discovered what the nurse was listing off, he dropped the equipment he had brought in and shouted, "Disable program! Disable program!"

Hearing the command, the nurse immediately faded away.

When the doctor looked back to Kaidan, he found a pale and wide-eyed young man. Unsure of what to say, the white coat paced the infirmary; his face red from anger, or possibly shame. Finally, he stopped and took a deep breath through his facemask.

"Not all of the kids in the galaxy with your gift can be helped," he said, producing a syringe. "Just be thankful you're one of the few that can."

Kaidan rolled off the bed to escape the needle, but falling onto the floor called the pain of his broken bones back to this mind. He screamed out in agony as the doctor's syringe persuaded him off to sleep. In his dreams, he was still running, but the pain most certainly passed.


	7. Close Encounter of the First Kind

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Five – Close Encounter of the First Kind

* * *

_**-Month Five-**_

"This will be your final exam," Miss Veratryn explained to Blue Team in her gentle, yet perky, tone of voice. "After today, all of you will have graduated beyond the first phase of BAaT…Yes, what is it, Felix?"

Felix dropped his hand when she called on him. "What's phase two?" he asked.

The woman's glossy-red lips turned up into a mischievous grin. "Don't want to spoil the surprise."

Half of the class sighed at this. Most of them had heard that excuse before, and the surprise wasn't always something they would have looked forward to in retrospect.

"Any more questions?" Lola cocked her head and waited patiently for a moment. "Good! Right, then. You all know the drill. You've all been through this test before. Ensure that the descending target does not reach the glowing line on the wall. That's it! And if this Team's combined dark matter output ranks in a proficient level, you will all receive a present."

Kaidan couldn't help but ask, "What's the present?" He felt silly asking questions that he knew would never warrant a truthful answer, but it tended to humor him.

"Something better than the typical rations you receive in the mess hall." Their teacher's white-gloved hand tapped at her chin in contemplation. "Maybe something along the lines of a delicious cake is in order."

Blue Team couldn't help themselves. Their mouths collectively watered at the sound of cake, as their only dessert in the past five months had been variations of vanilla, chocolate, and rice pudding.

"I like cake…" one of the younger kids muttered unconsciously.

"Good!" Lola seemed pleased at the positive reactions. "Who'll be the first seven?"

William parted the crowd with outstretched arms. He gracefully styled his hair and rolled up his sleeves. "Stand back, ladies. I'm about to win us some cake all by myself," he said, turning to Lola. "Which one's the winner's tube?"

Kaidan found it odd that for as many giggles and smiles Miss Veratryn was able to produce in a day, she never once laughed with the class or found any of their jokes amusing in the least bit. She was like some cyborg who had never possessed a sense of humor in the first place, but faked one merely to keep up appearances.

So it was no surprise that their teacher failed to so much as blink at William's showboating. Meanwhile, the rest of the class, Kaidan included, were trying their absolute hardest to not burst out into laughter.

As it was in their first trial, all of the older boys stepped forward to take their turns in the chambers first. Felix, William, Dante, and Kaidan all exchanged thumbs-ups, and went about getting strapped into the metal slabs.

"Good luck, gentlemen," Lola said with a wink.

Before Kaidan knew it, the slab was already retracting into the chamber, and the hatch slid shut behind him. Returning to the darkness of the place brought back all sorts of bad memories from his shock-induced blackout three months ago. But he was returning with something he didn't have before—confidence.

He knew the objective. He knew the goal. Now he had the tools to ensure that he emerged on the other end of the tunnel victorious—or conscious, at the very least.

The bullseye in the shaft above his chest lit up. Fear shot through him, but he didn't let it take hold. This is it, he repeated over and over in his mind. This is what you've trained for. This is nothing. Even as the target began its descent towards him, he continued his mantra. This is nothing.

Kaidan stretched his arms out towards the bullseye and began to draw his focus into a point. He felt his arms tingle at the nervous stimuli, and a blue light began to form around his body. A deep hum arose within the chamber that only his own ears could detect and resonate with. The sound of time and space being manipulated to his will.

His complete confidence returned, shooing away the fear and the darkness in his mind.

Carefully, he pushed the dark energies away from his body, and he watched as the waved slammed into the bullseye. The walls around him shuddered, but, to his horror, the target was still descending towards him.

"Aw, hell," Kaidan groaned. The feeling of fear and panic was moving back across his body like millions of bugs in the dark. A feeling he was strapped into, and was being forced to experience until that moment when the pain would return.

He didn't want to feel that pain again.

Again, he pushed his hands out towards the bullseye. His emotions broke free, and every thing that plagued him in that moment poured out in the form of a bright and sparking wave in front of him. His screams intensified his fear until the wave ripped away from his body without his command.

The dark energy crushed the target, folding the supporting pole in on itself. For a moment, everything was quiet again. The crippled bullseye didn't move, and Kaidan didn't breathe.

Then, as if to mock him, the target began to descend again, grinding against the metallic shaft as it did, showering Kaidan with sparks.

He couldn't move. He felt helpless yet again as the target slid across the line that represented the end. Fearing the shock, he tensed as much as his exhausted body would allow.

But, to his surprise, nothing happened. No shock. No blackout. _Nothing._

The hatch near his head slid open, and the slab began to move him back out into the light. When he was back in the open, he found that his friends were already waiting for him.

"He's awake!" Felix cheered. At this, all of the boys began high-fiving each other and clapping Kaidan on his shoulder.

Branson appeared in Kaidan's limited field of vision, and went about loosening the boy's restraints and allowing him to stand.

"You did good in there, Alenko," the man said with a subtle nod. It was the closest thing to approval that anyone in Blue Team had seen their old instructor offer them. "All of you managed to pass so far. Your output was more than adequate. None of you seven will be held back. Good work."

William stepped forward. "Mister Branson, sir. I think there's something wrong with that trial. The target kept descending even after we hit it."

"Call it, extra incentive," Branson replied. "We needed all of you to give your best performance in there, and we knew none of you would put your all into stopping the target. With the added scare, we were able to get very good readouts."

"So…Who had the highest output?"

"This isn't a competition, William. As students of BAaT, you should be better than that." Branson's tone was uncompromising. "But Kaidan had the highest."

The boys groaned and slumped in various directions. All Kaidan could do was raise his hands in the air triumphantly.

"Yeah. Yeah. Whatever." Dante feigned annoyance and led the boys out of the room. "Off to the mess hall we go."

William stopped in front of Branson. "Can I keep my target as a souvenir?" he asked, raising up a crumpled bullseye.

"No." Branson scooped up the target out of the boy's hand.

"Gee-whiz." William sighed away his depression and left the room with a drooped head.

Kaidan was the last to leave, still caught up in the air of glory that Branson had given him. He put his hands in the front pockets of his uniform and strolled through the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he caught sight of their tough-as-nails instructor, _Captain_ Branson, smiling as he crawled inside the trial chamber.

—

The boys stood outside the mess hall impatiently. As much as they wanted to support their younger teammates, sitting in a room with Branson for an undetermined amount of time did not sound appealing in the least bit. But they had no intention of strolling in to discover their reward with half of Blue Team missing.

"What if she lied about it?"

Felix looked over to the boy. "What're you talking about, Anders?"

"What if Miss Veratryn lied about the cake?" Anders asked the group.

"Pssh," Felix waved away the thought. "You're being paranoid."

None of them bothered to acknowledge the possibility immediately, but when all seven of them began to shift around uncomfortably, it became clear that it was on everyone's minds.

"You're all being paranoid," Felix accused the lot. "Why would she lie about a dang cake?"

Anders threw his hands up. "They've been willing to lie about all sorts of things lately. Did everyone just forget about what happened during the trial?"

The sixth boy, Isaac, braced himself against a nearby wall and moaned. "I really wanted cake. Tired of pudding."

"I don't think she lied," Kaidan said, trying to bring some life back to the group. "I don't mean to keep rising to our instructors' defense, but I don't believe they've personally lied to us once. It's all been half-truths and misdirection. If they say they're gonna do something, it usually happens."

The last boy, Seldon, moved to sit on the ground, pushing his glasses back up onto his nose as he did. "I guess we wait then? Doesn't make any sense to sit around and try to anticipate how we're gonna get screwed."

"No, it certainly doesn't." Felix whipped his arm towards the doors of the mess hall in a very dramatic fashion. "Let's just go in there and put an end to it."

Dante shook his head. "Not without the little ones."

"They wouldn't wait for us!"

"They're the _only_ ones who'd wait for us."

Everyone looked to Felix, anxious to hear what his reaction would be. In response, all he could do was shake his head.

"Screw it anyway! I want some cake!" Felix marched full-speed ahead into the mess hall, but couldn't stop fast enough when the door failed to slide open for him. He smacked his forehead into the steel door and nearly bounced back at the impact.

Laughter most certainly rose up at the display as Felix stumbled about, rubbing his forehead frantically.

"Ouch!" he cried. "What the hell is this?"

"Karma giving you a whipping, that's what." Dante shrugged. "Told you to wait."

"Blow it out your airlock, Dante. I wanna know why we're locked out of the mess hall."

Seldon moved to the sensor near the door and poked at it a few times. "These sensors are always lit up blue. That lets us know where we're free to wander in the station."

"I know that, _poindexter_." Felix held up his arm and shook the blue bracelet around on his wrist. "They're our keys. My question is why this door isn't unlocking for them."

"But this sensor is colored yellow right now. Which, I don't have to tell you, is not blue in any sense of the word."

The seven boys all leaned over in unison to examine the lighted panel. After they had all taken turns poking at it, Kaidan said to the group, "Maybe they just don't want us in there right now."

Dante motioned to Kaidan. "Our optimist, here. He's probably right. We've spent five months on this station, and we still manage to find out something new everyday."

"If you can put it so lightly," said Anders. "Like Alenko here finding out that the other students, wherever they are, have been falling apart at the seams. At least we know where Billy went."

"L2 rejection," Seldon agreed. "L2 is what Miss Veratryn keeps calling our implants. It's safe to say it didn't take to most of the other kids."

"This isn't helping," Kaidan's strict tone brought the group to silence. "Opinions aside, if we can't get in, then we can't get in. There's no reason to stand around here and bang on the door." He motioned to Felix and pointed to his forehead, drawing out laughs from the seven. "Let's just go back to the barracks and wait it out comfortably."

Danted nodded. "Agreed. Let's go."

Just as they turned to walk back to the barracks, the panel on the mess hall door lit up blue. As the door opened, Kaidan turned just in time to catch a strikingly familiar brown-haired girl disappear through a hatch on the other end of the hall. His heart stopped in that moment, and the memory of a promise that he made on his first day on Jump Zero snapped through his mind.

He turned to Dante, still not sure if he actually saw the girl. "Did you see—"

His words were drowned out when a member of the mess staff arrived in the room with a large, black forest gateau; complete with whipped cream and cherry toppings.

"CAKE!" The boys cried out in unison.

"It wasn't a lie!" Isaac cheered.

Blue Team didn't even wait for utensils, and started digging into the pastry with their bare hands. With abandon, they shoved the pieces into their mouths, moaning and giggling with a sugar-fueled delight.

Meanwhile, Kaidan couldn't keep his eyes off the hatch at the end of the hall. Suddenly, he wasn't very hungry anymore.


	8. Infinity Sings Dissonance

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Six – Infinity Sings Dissonance

* * *

_**-Month Five-**_

Kaidan found it utterly amazing how quickly his fellow teammates found contentment in their barracks, and all it took was a chocolate pastry. All of them moaned and groaned their way to bed, stricken with sugar rushes, full stomachs, and, of course, headaches.

"This is the best sickness I've ever had," Felix breathed from his bunk, burping to punctuate his comment. The other three boys who were still awake grunted in agreement, before they, too, were fast asleep—snoring like bears in hibernation.

The spectacle brought forth feelings of amusement and, conjointly, shame. Watching friends who he had known to possess some measure of restraint in life were now passed out with chocolate shavings and whipped cream imparting their disease.

"Goodnight, team," Kaidan whispered into the barracks. Aware that his friends were effectively passed-out, he backed away towards the door and began to retrace his steps back to the trial room.

In the excitement of the moment, and the sugar-induced ecstasy that followed, none of the other six boys had bothered to notice that another six members of Blue Team were still missing in action. At first, he thought that the children's delay was on account of the equipment that he and the older boys had tore apart, but it was getting late in the day, and that alone warranted some investigation on his part.

—

For the third time, Kaidan backtracked his way to the schoolroom, the only place in that particular part of Blue Team's section of Jump Zero that he could remember. Once he was there, he paced in front of the door a few times, trying to shake something loose within his mind. Both times they had left the room for the trial, he had enough on his mind to keep him from worrying about their direction. Following Miss Veratryn's lead subconsciously had been good enough for him.

Even when they made their way back to the mess hall, he simply went with the crowd. Now he was beginning to regret not dragging along one of his teammates to lead him back to the trial room.

He felt sorry for the little ones and at how long they must have been waiting for the trial to be reset after all the damage it had experienced. Veratryn wasn't much for real emotions, but Kaidan imagined that her fake sense of cheeriness would be enough to entertain the kids for a while.

He stopped himself and tried to relax. The tension of that day was still wearing upon him and making it hard to think. Or maybe it was just difficult to keep his mind close to him at a place like Jump Zero. He had spent the past five months wishing he was somewhere else; maybe he had finally received his wish, now that it seemed that remembering a place he had been no more than a few hours ago was a problem.

Kaidan groaned loudly and let it echo down the halls, wondering if anyone could actually hear him. It wouldn't have surprised him if the cordial staff of Jump Zero had eyes and ears on every bolt in the station. He had never cared, though. He wanted to he heard, at this of all times.

"Trying to get back to the trial room here." He elevated his tone, but didn't shout, as he was still quite uncomfortable with doing that—there was always that looming adolescent feeling that he just might awaken some kind of demon in the station.

"Anyone?" he asked and whistled in a taunting manner. "Guess I'll just go through the teacher's desk." Kaidan had meant this as a joke, but real curiosity infected him as he said it. He walked into the darkened room, lit only by a stream of light coming from the fluorescents in the hallway.

As recklessly as he could manage, he pulled open every single drawer in the teacher's desk. He was annoyed by the fact that neither Branson nor Miss Veratryn bothered to so much as humor their students when he found each compartment empty.

Kaidan's sigh was a resounding one, but just as he exhaled the last bit of air out of his lungs, a door opened from somewhere out in the hall. He sat straight up in alarm. It was either the kids returning to the barracks, or one of the Jump Zero staff members coming to investigate; either way, rummaging through his teacher's desk was not where he wanted to be caught.

He took a quick look to make sure all of the drawers were pushed in then sprinted out the door and did his best to look nonchalant. Minutes ticked by, and no one showed up. No one at all—which only made him question his sanity even further. He was sure he had heard a door open!

"Alenko," a gruff, but familiar voice called out. "Front and center."

Kaidan followed Branson's voice down the hall until he reached a room that he had never seen unlocked until now. The steel around him was lit in a way he had never seen before. The source of this light was not nearly as bright as the standard-issue fluorescents he had grown accustomed to. It was as if the world around him had dimmed away to reveal that which always lay just beyond his grasp.

It was an observation room. A giant fishbowl that revealed the sparkling and infinite glory of the cosmos to Kaidan for the first time in months. He could hardly tell that more than a half a meter of glass surrounded him, everything was crystal clear. Above him, the thick stretch of clouded twilight that was the Milky Way was suspended out there in the black; so inhumanly accentuated and alive with the twinkling of millions of stars caught within its embrace.

Out in the distance, just before him, a bright blue planet hovered gently in its own patch of space. At first glance, it looked like Earth, but he didn't get his hopes up. He remembered what the Conatix rep said about the station being somewhere in Neptune's orbit. Upon closer inspection, he could see the planet's everlasting superstorm wisping away through it's gaseous atmosphere; a great dark spot that made the world look like an eye, peering into him as if there was something to be seen there.

Kaidan wasn't sure how much time had passed until he finally noticed Branson in the room with him. He didn't particularly care, though. How can one keep good time when gazing at something that has no age?

"You like the view?" Branson said in his typical tone of voice that blurred the lines between a question and a command.

"Yes," Kaidan quietly replied.

"Elaborate."

The boy didn't have to think very long. All of the thoughts he had about the view were still dancing around in his mind. "It's the most beautiful sight I've ever looked upon." He pointed towards the Milky Way. "It almost looks like I can scoop it up from here."

"Good." Branson said quickly. "Never lose that passion, Alenko. I'm telling you right now—don't let anyone ever take that away from you. Not even us." He tilted his head down at the boy. "Are we clear?"

Kaidan nodded. "Captain Branson, sir. I've been looking all over for the kids. Have you—"

"Things are going to be changing." Branson cut him off abruptly. "Conatix isn't happy with the way things are going around here. They think that our first set of human biotics—in history—are progressing…_inadequately._ We're going to be merging several of the classes together, and your leisure time is going to start to disappear." He sighed, but kept his eyes on the stars outside the glass.

He continued. "This isn't what I came here to do, Kaidan. Believe me when I say this. Know that no matter what happens from this moment on, you can trust me…but I'll be making it very hard for you to do so…and for that, I apologize."

Kaidan had almost completely disregarded everything his teacher had said. He had given up on looking for better days a long time ago, so it wasn't news that things would be getting more difficult soon.

"Captain Branson," he repeated. "Where are the little ones?"

Branson didn't answer immediately. He let the silence pass between them until the passing seconds granted him the courage to speak again. "They didn't pass the trial."

Kaidan tried not to curse out loud, though he knew that the younger boys had trouble learning to manipulate their powers correctly. "They didn't pass. Okay, so what does that mean for them?"

The man continued to stand with as much dignity as he could summon, until he finally turned his back on the blue, black emptiness behind him. "Your growing powers, they don't accept failure. You either learn to control them, or you don't. There is no middle ground. No second chances. The reason you have your strength, and the reason you're still living, is because of what you learned."

"Where are the kids?" Kaidan's voice broke as he muttered his demand through quivering lips. He knew.

Branson ignored the question. "Time is a luxury for everyone on this station. If you don't possess the strength, then time can also be your enemy."

"Where are the kids?"

"This is the beginning of a new age for humanity, Kaidan. You have to understand, we had the best intentions. We never wanted to let anyone fall behind…but they did…They did, Kaidan."

"Where are the kids?"

A deep thud echoed through the walls, shaking Kaidan's stance. He clumsily caught his balance, but as he did, he saw something through the glass. He leaned further, past Branson's trembling form, and saw a white mist hiss out from somewhere on the station that disbursed into a tall column. But looking closer into the mist—

He saw them.

"Oh, my God." Kaidan stumbled backwards and lost his footing. The world was spinning, the world Conatix had built for him. He couldn't stand on it anymore; everything burned with the fumes of the devil's laughter. There was nothing he could do to keep it away. He was just waiting for his turn.

"Forgive me, Kaidan," Branson pleaded. "Forgive me…"

Kaidan turned sprinted for the door and managed to make it to the hallway, but the emotions crept back, gripping him until he could hear things snapping somewhere in his head. His implants ran hot, burning the muscles they clung to. With all he had, he screamed into the air and released the dark energy that had built around him.

The shockwave ripped through the hallway, shattering all of the lights into a hail of broken glass.

Everything was silent again, but it was dark. Too dark. It made it all the easier to see them within his mind—the cloud of white mist, aimed towards the heavens, and the six small coffins within.


	9. Interlude: Lost to the Ancients

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Interlude: Lost to the Ancients

* * *

Kaidan took cover behind a crate, narrowly dodging a geth sniper bolt. After gifting himself a panic breath, he reached his arm up and blindly fired in the direction the shot had come from.

From further up the ramp, Shepard and Ashley, with machine guns running hot, tore away at the sniper's cover until the synthetic's loud, artificial death rattle oscillated through the air. When the sound of steel hitting steel could be heard, Kaidan raised himself up to see if the platform was cleared.

"Kaidan, get down!" Shepard's voice rang out.

The Sentinel's eyes focused in on a blurred figure moving towards him. As he raised his pistol to take it down, it leaped upon him with unimaginable swiftness. Before he knew it, he was on his back with arms outstretched, keeping the gnashing jaw of the cybernetic husk away from his neck.

It screamed at him over and over, clawing at Kaidan's visor, trying to find any measure of exposed flesh to tear into. Its eyes, that had at one point looked upon the world with human perspective, now burned with a blue plasma blaze. As he continued wrestling with the creature, decayed flesh ripped away in flakes, revealing the newly-formed veins of wiring that pulsed with electricity.

"Damn it!" Getting an arm free from under the creature, he swung into the thing's head with a sharp left. Seeing it shake its head, stunned, Kaidan pushed forwards with his focus, encasing the husk in a mass effect field. With one more push, the creature floated upwards into the sky at the mercy of the dark energies surrounding it.

Exhausted, he rolled around onto his side and reached for his pistol so he could finish the job. But Shepard as already there, sweeping up the weapon and handing it to him by the barrel.

"I'll take care of it, Kaidan," she said, raising her machine gun to the husk that seemed to be hovering at least one hundred meters in the air. With a single shot she pierced the creature's head, setting off its self-destruct sequence which lit up the sky with a blue plasma shockwave. Pieces of the husk rained down around the trio as Shepard helped Kaidan to his feet.

"Thanks, Commander," Kaidan said when he was standing on his own again. "At least we found out how long I'd last without someone watching my back."

Shepard shook her head. "Don't be so hard on yourself. Cybernetic zombies tackling you? Could've happened to anyone."

The Sentinel smirked. "If you're not prepared for anything, what are you prepared for?" he quoted with a shrug.

"I lost faith in that adage a long time ago," Ashley chimed in, brushing the dust off her armor. "Shoot first, and ask questions later. That's what they should tell all the soldiers on the fringe of the Traverse from now on."

Shepard and Kaidan nodded in absent agreement. Their attention was stolen elsewhere—towards the dark, slender pillar the glowed with a green energy that gave it the illusion of being in an ethereal fog.

The Prothean Beacon. The target of their mission. The whole reason for Shepard's presence on Eden Prime, and for the ensuing search that had claimed a soldier under her command, Richard L. Jenkins, and a turian Spectre named Nihlus Kryik.

It was a mission that they all could safely say had become FUBAR a long while ago, there was a bright side—no matter how dim it seemed at that moment—and that was the revelation that there would be someone to pay for the devastation to the human colony, as well as the two casualties of Normandy's crew.

A human dockworker, their only witness, pointed them to a turian who Nihlus had called _Saren_.

It was more than enough to go on, and the mission itself couldn't be called a complete failure now that they were in possession of the Beacon.

Shepard turned away to signal the Normandy for evac. Meanwhile, Kaidan couldn't help but stare into the alien artifact, and the energy it released. He could feet a sensual beckon from it, begging him to come just a few steps closer—and without thinking, he did so.

It was as if invisible tentacles had latched onto him, gripping him through his suit, through flesh, bone, and down into his implants. His boots screeched across the metal platform at the force reeled him in closer and closer to the green fog. Voices began to speak to him. Louder and louder as echoes and in a language he didn't understand.

He could see some kind cliff in his mind. Kaidan knew it wasn't there, but he felt it. A coming end that he wouldn't be able to escape, and he didn't have the strength to try.

Something else grabbed at him, though. Easing him away from that cliff, and carrying him away into the cooling breeze. It was an angel, he was sure of it. The embrace around him was gentle, but its pull carried a sense of urgency.

It snapped him back to reality, and he found himself tumbling across the platform. He quickly regained his senses, and turned to find Shepard being pulled up towards the Beacon in his place.

"Shepard!" Kaidan shouted and sprinted towards the Commander, but Ashley cut him off.

"Don't touch her!" Ashley said, trying her hardest to keep the man at bay.

Kaidan fought the urge to use his biotics to push the girl aside, but his rationale kept him in check. All he could do was watch as Shepard floated helplessly in the air in front of the Beacon, her whole body writhing in spasms as the alien technology claimed her.

Then, all of a sudden, the Beacon exploded, throwing Shepard's to the ground. Kaidan was at her side immediately, checking her pulse and looking for signs of life in her eyes.

He switched on his comm. "Kaidan to Normandy! The Commander's been injured. We need immediate evac now!"

Joker's voice cut through the static. "Alright, Lieutenant. We're coming in hot. Get her back to this tram station I'm seeing on the sensors. That'll be our closest bet for a landing. Joker, out."

Kaidan immediately picked Shepard's motionless body up into his arms, and he ran with Ashley close behind. He never lost his pace, even as he jumped over the bodies of dead geth and maneuvered around the various shipping crates that packed the platforms.

He was almost to the tram rails when the SSV Normandy's giant blue, black hull came into view. Even at it's proximity, the engines were almost dead silent—a true marvel of engineering that didn't even slow Kaidan in the least bit.

On the loading ramp, many crewmembers were standing in wait, ready to help, but the Sentinel didn't stop, not until Shepard was safely in the sickbay.

Kaidan couldn't have Shepard die. Not now. He couldn't explain it, but he knew the connection was there between the two of them. Maybe he would be the last to admit it, as he never thought he could ever deserve such a perfect relationship. Not in a million years.

He stayed with the girl in sickbay as the ship's doctor looked her over, and he didn't leave or sleep a wink until he saw Shepard's exuberant gaze meet his again.


	10. The Devil Hails From Palaven

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Seven – The Devil Hails From Palaven

* * *

_**-Month Six-**_

The seven boys sat motionless in the classroom. Behind the teacher's desk, Lola Veratryn stood erect with arms crossed behind her. There was no conversation. No awkward smiles or chuckles from the woman. Just silence and the knowledge that six of their classmates were gone, and there were only the grown-ups to blame.

Dante never broke his stare that burned into Miss Veratryn, his eyes displayed a ferocity that none of the other classmates wanted to even imagine crossing paths with. Occasionally, their teacher would look over and meet his gaze, but her emotions never shifted and she never gave off a sense of discomfort. When she looked away again, boredom seemed to be the only cause of it.

Aside from Dante and Miss Veratryn, the mood in the classroom was that of guilt, depression, and mourning. None of the boys had forgiven themselves for going out and enjoying their dessert while the young ones passed on under the weight of their own powers. It was tough for them to admit, but even tougher to forget.

William hadn't said a word since then. That is unless someone went out of their way to strike up the conversation with him, but that was a rarity as well, so the quietness continued for many days.

Kaidan dealt with it in his own way. He hit the training room every day, lifting weights—with both his arms and biotics—manipulating mass effect fields around different objects, and running in the extragravitational ring whenever it was unlocked to Blue Team. He would run until his muscles were numb and his mind got cloudy. He did anything he could to keep his mind away.

No matter their feelings, though, there was nothing to be said. The boys of Blue Team knew this all too well. They could accuse the woman of wrong doing. They could lay out their case of grievances and shout their way down the list until their mouths went dry. But that wouldn't change the fact that they were alone. There was no one around to help them, and those who had the power to help wouldn't care to try.

Finally, Lola coughed to clear her throat, as if she had been waiting for something. "As you no doubt may have found out, this classroom will be growing a bit more crowded. We are going to be merging Blue Team with Red Team momentarily. You may have met some of these young ladies before on your shuttle ride here, but I believe most of them arrived here later."

She motioned to the door into the classroom, her glossy, bright red nails flickering in the light. On cue, a line of seven young girls filed into the room, each of them walked to the nearest open desks and sat down quietly.

Kaidan took broke free from his trance caused by the Spanish poster on the wall, turning just in time to see the brown haired girl take a seat at the desk immediately to his left. As she dropped into the chair, the motion threw the scent of her through the air and right towards Kaidan. The sensation shocked his brain into recalling the few minutes he had shared with this girl. Their cramped elevator ride, and the promise he had failed to keep to her—that everything would be fine.

Rahna kept her eyes forward, her back stiff, and her hands gripped together on top of the desk. When Kaidan finally decided to look elsewhere, he discovered that all of the girls had sat themselves down in the exact same manner, as if all of them had just returned from etiquette classes.

Slowly, the rest of the seven boys came to life and examined the girls' dignified posture with questioning gazes.

"You hypnotized them," Felix said to Miss Veratryn, horrified.

"No," Lola replied, shaking her head. "They just didn't have a teacher that possessed my sense of leniency." She adjusted her glare to look out over the class. "And I'm afraid that will no longer be the case for you boys, either."

As the class contemplated the meaning of Miss Veratryn's words, they heard heavy footfalls coming from something out in the hallway. It was metal against metal clacking—almost perfectly paced, rivaling the sound of a metronome.

They saw his talons first as he stepped into the room, which frightened the students to their core. They thought it was a monster, something horrible that the Jump Zero staff had created to scare the kids into performing at their peak efficiency. Hundreds of different beasts were created in Blue Team's collective minds until the figure came into full view.

He was a turian, which put the students at relative ease. They were all completely aware of the alien species from various vids and the few who had settled on Earth in the spirit of diplomacy. Though, none of them had ever seen one in a corporeal sense.

He looked over the class, the mandibles on either side of his face slowly swaying as he did. His eyes were arctic blue color that almost seemed to glow, but held no noticeable emotion. Across the sides of his face were black markings that took the form of two symbols that resembled large "V"s, with their points aimed down towards his chin.

He shifted around in his black and red armor and sighed with what the children could only guess was frustration. When his "analysis" was complete, he turned to Lola and nodded. "I'll take it from here."

This was the first time that the children of Blue Team had ever seen Lola Veratryn nervous. She nodded quickly and walked to exit the room, her eyes blinking a mile-a-minute as she passed the turian. "They're all yours, Commander," she said. Then she was gone, leaving the class alone with this alien and his cold stare.

Casually, the turian paced in front of the class, sizing the kids up yet again. With each sweep he made of the room, his frustration visibly intensified.

"Your species…_bleeds_ far too easily," he said, his warped baritone putting the students on edge. "You're soft like the salarians, though you haven't the intelligence. You're fragile like the asari, but you obviously lack the one talent they excel at." He picked up a datapad from the teacher's desk and flung it at William's head. It was so sudden, the boy had no time to react, and the pad bounced off his skull.

The turian appeared to gain some amusement from this. "The asari live for a thousand years. For the first seventy-five of those years, they are practically still in their adolescent stage, like the lot of you. But at ten years old, their powers over dark matter dwarf those of any other species."

He moved forward to the front row of desks, the students there sank back in their seats.

"So, if you do not possess the intelligence of the salarians, the tenacity of the turians, or the biotic strength of the asari, then just what is humanity good for in the grand scheme of things?" He paused as if expecting an answer. It lasted long enough for the boys and girls of Blue Team to become intimidated enough to think up answers, but they were far too afraid to give them.

"Silence?" he asked, feigning concern. "No, that's exactly right. _Silence_. That's what was around before Relay 314, and that what will still exist in humanity's wake, even as you become more and more entangled in Citadel Space. Though, I will give you credit for further stimulating the economy. The strength of our credits was becoming the topic of much discussion before you arrived.

"So here you all are. Sitting here just to exist, not unlike the krogans—to provide economic stimulus and an occasional war if it calls for it, but beyond that…_silence._ You're just the Citadel's pet that we throw a bone to so you'll keep quiet." He tapped one of his talons against his head. "Which brings me to why I'm here…"

He turned back to the teacher's desk and sat upon it. After his rant, he looked considerably relaxed. "Continuing on, true to your legacy, your Conatix Industries has provided monetary compensation in exchange for my services. But do not make the mistake of believing I am driven by reward. I treat every mission I accept with the utmost conviction, as if my own life depended on it...instead of yours.

"My name is Mathran Vyrnnus. _Commander_ Vyrnnus to you—the name by which you will assign to your fear for the rest of your days. I will not need to know your names, as there will be no reason to call you aside for praise or otherwise. You either complete the task I've assigned you, or you don't. There is no middle ground, and you will know you have failed when you see me standing over you. It is my objective to break you all apart so that I might build you back up again, piece by piece.

"For your own sakes, you'd better not be as broken as your superiors made you out to be or you'll be dead before your second trial."

Kaidan made the mistake of making direct eye contact for too long, unable to control the fear nervousness within him. Vyrnnus saw this and strolled over to the boy, pushing desks out of his way even though some of them were occupied.

"You look nervous," Vyrnnus hissed. "Maybe it's rooted in anger, maybe fear. I doubt you've ever heard of me before this day, so you must know of the reputation my kind has developed around your planet." He leaned over, almost nose to nose with Kaidan, to look into the boy's eyes. "It _is_ fear...What could have caused that, I wonder? Fear of suffering? Fear of loss?

"It's been, what, nine years since the Relay 314 Incident? Not too long to shoo away the memories of death." Vyrnnus' laugh was loud and, unlike those from Miss Veratryn, was most certainly not faked. "Your kind was _vaporized_ from the frontlines during that conflict! Have you ever seen a full decompression of a starship take place? It's amazing really. One of the greatest chain-reactions one can witness…and it's slow. You can see it, deck by deck, bodies being flung out into the black and the continuing concussions pulverizing the corpses into chunks of ice.

"Most of us in the military call that 'shine-matter', because the frozen remains of a dead enemy shine in a very unique way under starlight. Lets us know when our job is done, and there was plenty of the stuff floating around by my command—my word. So you must know that I was at the helm of the dreadnought that killed your father."

Possible recruits for BAaT were made available by medical hospitals with military funding. The odds of being shipped off to Jump Zero without having a family member in the Navy or Marines was low indeed. Kaidan did in fact have a father in the Navy, but was never in a position to be sent off to assist in the First Contact War with the turians.

Kaidan grinned nervously, deciding he should correct his new teacher. "Mister Vyrnnus, sir, my father never served in the war…"

The boy regretted it immediately.

Vyrnnus' eyes welted with unadulterated wrath. His action was swift, calculated, and provoked restrained screams from a few of the girls in the room. With one arm he flipped Kaidan's desk over, sending the boy tumbling into the nearby wall.

Seeing this, some of the other boys, Dante and William included, stood up to help their friend, but another look from the turian sent them unwillingly back to their seats.

"You think you're special out here, _human_?" Vyrnnus' voice was deeper than ever, emanating from his throat like a growl. Kaidan was pressed up against the wall, tears spilling out of his eyes, and body trembling from fear. "You're out here because you were already dead! You've already proven that you are unworthy of the life you now possess! Remember that! Each day that you breathe through from this day forwards is _borrowed_!"

The turian commander stood to gather the classroom's undivided attention. He regained his calm in a skillful manner before speaking again. "If I might take a few words from your own kind's teachings. Your Buddhist monks refer to your growth and development as a torch—a fire is lit upon it at the dawn, and is snuffed out at dusk. The flame is different with each passing hour, but the light from it never changes. Well, that light in each of you is dim before my eyes. Under my guidance, your fires will be re-lit for a new dawn in your lives, and the light from it will be brighter than it's ever been."

Vyrnnus tilted his head forward and a smile stretched across his face, anticipating the journey ahead of him.

"I will never let you forget who keeps that fire burning within you. And you will never forget how easily I can snuff it out..."


	11. In Your Honor

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Eight – In Your Honor

* * *

_**-Year One-**_

Kaidan couldn't remember a time since arriving at Jump Zero when he dreamed of Earth, but one came when he least expected it.

He was standing near the edge of the Avalon Run in La Grange, looking out over the shimmering, crystalline radiance of Lake Don Pedro. The wind was moving through the fields and up against his back before spilling out over the waters below. He swiveled his shoe around in the dust, letting it get caught up in the breeze. A tiny whirlwind formed when he did this, but disappeared as soon as he noticed it.

The land grew more detailed, and the area in and around the lake was soon spotted with people, boats and beach umbrellas. Children chased the waves on the shore and built castles of sand while their parents kept a watchful eye from their loungers. On an old wooden dock, teenagers stood around with their friends and girlfriends and took turns randomly pushing each other into the water.

Everything looked familiar in a way. Kaidan didn't doubt that he could have been here before. A story about an ancient railway beneath the waves tickled at his consciousness, but he couldn't apply it to this place for sure.

When he stepped out from the Run, all of the kids, parents, teenagers, and boaters stopped what they were doing simultaneously. Their heads snapped in Kaidan's direction, and the air fell remarkably calm. He felt nervousness creep up on him until he heard a voice from out on the beach call out to him.

_"Come on, Kaidan!"_

_"The water's fine!"_

At this, all of the people cheered and motioned for him to join them for a day on the lake. Kaidan considered this for a long while, but politely declined. There was a cacophonous sound of moans and groans as the boy turned away from the lake and headed back into the fields. He looked back and the scene had resumed with everyone playing under the sun.

Ahead of him, a dark grey storm was billowing out from behind the snow-capped mountains. He walked towards it, knowing that to grant himself any sort of mercy like the one that lay behind him would only make things worse. A day for the weary is always darkest when everything else is at peace.

He thought of it in a good way, though. It had been months since he was able to clearly picture anything resembling his life on Earth. At the very least, he thought, not all was forgotten.

—

In the middle of the night, he heard a gentle, familiar voice whisper in his ear. When her breath tickled his ear, Kaidan couldn't help but smile as he returned to the real world. He sat up in his bunk, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, where he found the beautiful, brown-haired wonder waiting for him at the foot of his mattress.

Rahna was smiling so brightly that Kaidan felt warm inside. She clapped silently. "Finally! Do you know how long I've been sitting here?"

Kaidan blushed. "I heard you in my dreams."

"Pleasant dreams, I hope."

He nodded. "I wanted you to stay there with me."

The girl tried to hide her flattered expression by looking down at her knees. "You remember what day it is?"

It took a moment for Kaidan to break out of his sleepy haze and remember. He chuckled to himself. "Happy birthday," he said.

Rahna returned the laugh and patted the boy on the head. "Happy birthday."

—

Everyone was already gathered in the mess hall by the time Kaidan and Rahna arrived. The boys and girls of Blue Team were huddled around the only chow table in the room, exchanging jokes and stories and doing their best not laugh very loud. Being caught by Vyrnnus would mean a full day of training without the sleep they were supposed to be getting at that moment.

"What happened, Rahna?" Felix asked incredulously. "I told you to hurry and wake Kaidan up, not sleep with him!" The back of Dante's hand caught him on the side of the head. "Ow!"

"Come on over," Dante called to the new arrivals, shaking his head at Felix's joke. "We were just about to get started."

Hurriedly, Kaidan led Rahna by the hand to the table and they took their seats—completing the circle.

"Alright," Dante began in a mockingly formal tone. "As you all know, it was brought to our attention yesterday by our supreme poobah, Commander Vyrnnus, that today marks a very important event. Can anyone repeat what was said?"

On cue, William cleared his throat and took on a gruff voice. "Embarrassment must be second nature to you human scum now. After a year of training, you still can't get anything right."

Many of the students laughed.

Dante nodded, snickering as well. "Right. Word for word. If we can take this little slip-up as fact, this means that we've officially been enlisted in Brain Camp for a grand total of one year—even if it's felt longer than that. It's safe to say that all of us have had birthdays come and go during that time, and I think it's also safe to say that none of us can tell exactly when those days passed us by. So…"

He reached under the table and produced a tray with something resembling a cake upon it. Etched into what looked like frosting, were the names of each of the members of Blue Team. It was also decorated with smiley faces, stick figures, suns, and what looked like—

"Who drew boobs on the frosting?" Dante demanded of the group. Everyone exchanged glances until all eyes locked onto William. Seeing the jig was up, the boy innocently raised his hand.

"I was gonna erase them," he claimed.

"Yeah, I bet you were." Dante used his finger to smudge out the drawing while William sneered at everyone.

"Didn't take much for any of you to sell me out," he huffed. "Traitorous swine."

Laughter rose up again.

Dante continued, feigning seriousness. "As I was saying, children. Today we will be celebrating our missed birthdays with this one glorious celebration. So, let's go down the list here. In your honor, this delicious cake is dedicated to the enduring members of Blue Team: Kaidan—"

"Why'd he get named first?" Felix exclaimed, laughing.

"Because you're simple," scolded Dante. "Moving on! Kaidan, _Felix_," he peered at the boy as the list went on, "William, Anders, Isaac, Rahna, Aryn, Ellie, Roslyn, Tila, Kara, Krin, any myself. Happy Birthday to us all!"

The group nodded in unison, with a few of them muttering, "Amen."

"Wait," William interjected, putting his hands over the cake. "We forgot a name." Slowly, he scribbled in the letters, and the enthusiasm was swept completely out of the room.

Aryn began to tear up, provoking anyone else who had been on the verge to cry as well.

"A few more weeks and he could have made it," Felix breathed. "Just a few more weeks."

Kaidan shook his head. "He wouldn't want us crying for him."

"Kaidan's right," Aryn said, wiping the wetness from her eyes. "'Death is the obsession of the discontent.' Isn't that what he always said? So let's just move along."

Again, the room was active with agreeable nods.

"Then let's dig in, shall we?" Dante grabbed the first piece to prompt the others to follow suit. One at a time, each of the thirteen teammates dug in and ripped off a piece of the cake for themselves.

"What is this?" Anders asked.

"Pieces of cornbread and the chocolate pudding that you're all so fond of," Felix answered. "But don't worry, I mixed in some of the vanilla pudding to give it a different taste."

Rahna was the first to speak her mind. "This is pretty disgusting," she said through a mouthful of the stuff.

"I know," William replied as he finished off the rest of his piece. "It's great isn't it?"

Despite its recycled taste, the students of Blue Team picked at the would-be cake eagerly, joking about their time on Jump Zero like it had all been a bad dream. By the time they decided they were full, they slowly stood to begin their trip back to the barracks. The way they figured it, they'd only have three hours of sleep until Vyrnnus came marching in to begin their day. It had been worth giving up sleep for the time they had together. Not a single regret impeded on any of their thoughts.

Dante picked up the tray and set it on the refuse station. There was only one piece of the cake left, but it wasn't meant for any of them. Written upon it in William's curvy handwriting, as if to reserve it, was the name: _Seldon_.

—

When the students returned to the barracks, all of the lights had been turned off. Kaidan harmlessly flicked on the switch so they could find their way to their respective bunks, but something emerged from the fleeing shadows that made everyone freeze in place.

With icy blue eyes trained on the group, and fingers tented in front of him, Vyrnnus became the portrait of Blue Team's anxiety. Casually, he sat up from the nearest bunk and walked towards the class, his talons clacking on the flooring every step of the way.

To the group, it was as hearing their punishment approach.

"I was under the assumption that only the salarians slept one hour a day," Vyrnnus growled. "It can't be that you didn't need the sleep. Maybe you just wanted more time to fool around." His eyes burned into Kaidan. "You have your six hours of free time a week. Other than that, the only other time you shouldn't see my face is when you close your eyes to sleep. If you're awake, you will train."

The turian cocked his head. "You're awake…therefore…" His foot whipped up, and before Kaidan knew it, he was being kicked out into the hall. As the boys body slammed onto the steel flooring, Vyrnnus roared at the group, "To the ring!"

The students helped Kaidan to his feet and took off running towards the umbilical access tunnels with their teacher calling out behind them, "If I catch anyone walking, I'll make sure your legs are quite useless for a long while!"

—

Blue Team completed their first lap of the ring. After running it so many times in the past, a few kilometers a day wasn't so bad anymore. Though, they knew that whenever Vyrnnus was in one of his moods, he wouldn't give the order to stop until one of the students had passed out from exhaustion.

"See him yet?" Kaidan asked Dante, who shook his head.

"It bothers me that he seems to have so much to do when he puts us on autopilot," he replied. "What goes on behind any one of these locked doors bothers me, in fact."

"It's alright, Dante. We've dealt with V's little episodes in the past and we're still dealing. Anyways, he seems to have taken a liking to me since that first day he arrived."

"That's just it, Kaid. We shouldn't have to _deal_. I'm tired of them loosening our chains by a link and calling it freedom. I'm tired of not being able to celebrate our own goddamn birthday without being punished. I used to hate going to the hospital, now getting sent to sickbay seems like a vacation!" He shook his head. "I'm tired of it, man. We're prisoners here. Billy was on to something our first week here—we're just waiting for our turn to step-out."

Felix ran faster to join Dante and Kaidan and said, "I know things are messed up around here, bud, but even you gotta see that they might've been right to keep us here. How many other people did you know back on Earth that could shoot _mind bullets_? That's not normal."

"To hell with all that," Dante grunted. "We don't deserve this. The little ones didn't deserve this. Neither did Billy or Seldon. I don't care what their reasons behind keeping us here is." He stopped running at the next umbilical access. Bewildered, the other students stopped running as well.

He spoke loudly, filled with the conviction of his goal. "We can't stay here anymore. We have to get back to Earth or they're just going to kill us off one at a time. I'm not waiting for my number to get called." He pointed to Kaidan. "That mess you made in the hallway all those months ago. Think you can do something like that again?"

Kaidan shuffled around nervously, not completely sure if Dante was serious. "I'm not sure what you're getting at, Dante…Are you saying you want to escape?" His friend nodded.

"We've been here for a year. They've taught us how to control our implants sufficiently. Sure we lose our stamina over time, but we'd only have to make it to the hangar, or even a communications room to send a distress call to a civilian channel. We can last that long!"

"And what makes you think that they won't just kill us when we start busting down doors? Even if we get a signal out, we're still at their mercy out here. I mean, we don't even know where we are!"

Dante was losing his composure. He was smiling for unknown reasons, and his eyes communicated a desperation that had been locked up for far too long. "Fine! Stay here. Sit around and wait until your L2s fry your spines. Sit around and wait until Vyrnnus decides his students aren't worth teaching and makes you take a walk outside. Sit around and wait to see how they'll come at you—I'm not!"

The boy's entire body began to glow blue with dark matter. The students of Blue Team took a step back, unsure of how to handle the situation. All of them were entirely on the fence about what to do. Follow Dante and take their slim chance of escaping, or simply deal, as Kaidan had said. A few of them began crying as the decision wore upon them.

But their minds were made up for them as a half a dozen white coats marched in from the umbilical tunnel. They had tranquilizer rifles in hand and slowly advanced towards the boy shrouded in the mass effect field.

"Dante," one of them called to the boy. "You need to calm down now. Your implants can't handle the stress at this stage."

Another white coat cut in. "You'll develop tumors in your brain that'll spread like a rash. You need to calm yourself. We're trying to help you."

Dante looked surprised, and his laugh, warped by the field around him, carried far into the ring. "Help us? You've already killed half my team! How is that helping us? Why couldn't you just leave us on Earth and let us take our dying breaths with our families?"

"We wanted to give you a life, Dante," a doctor replied, taking aim with his rifle. "We had to try. You were a threat to yourself and those around you."

"Yeah?" Dante shrugged, unconvinced. "Well, I'll take my chances. I'm going home—and right now, the only ones I'm a threat to is _you_!"

The doctors opened fire, and six darts fluttered through the air towards the boy's neck. Not one of them reached their target as they ricocheted off the ripples of dark matter.

In response, Dante let loose a concentrated wave of energy, which tore through the white coats, sending their bodies bouncing all over the ring as gravity's hold on them dissipated. When they finally hit the ground naturally, they crumpled into unconsciousness.

The boy turned back to the group. "This is what we're up against! This is nothing! We can do this!" Suddenly, Dante was struck in the back of the neck. He stumbled, but easily recovered and found himself squaring off with the looming turian they called, Vyrnnus.

"You're out of line, human." It was the closest to a friendly warning that the turian could manage. "Training subjects with such raw abilities is the equivalent of walking the razor's edge blindfolded. If you walk this path, there's no turning back. This pathetic display of self-righteousness will be nothing more than an echo."

"Don't you mean _silence_, turian?" Dante snapped. "Seldon died because you pushed him too hard! He couldn't take it anymore."

"He took the coward's path to salvation," Vyrnnus corrected without emotion. "You are all still very much alive, and keeping you in such a state was never going to be a pleasant walk and a simple talk. I spare your life every time I push you to the brink. If you think I'm being unfair, then you have every right to take yourself out of the equation like your little friend did."

"Shut up!" Dante unleashed a wave of energy at the turian, which was enough to begin warping the steel in the ring.

Vyrnnus stood directly in its path, unmoving. When it came into contact with him it merely bounced off. The alien didn't even bother to blink.

Fueled by emotions rooted in rage and sadness, Dante released everything he had in him. The ring began to groan and scream a twisted metal song as the boy tried to bring down the very sky around him. He wanted everything to go away, and he did it the only way he knew how.

When he was completely drained, the boy looked around to see what he had done. He gritted his teeth in pain when he saw Vyrnnus still standing, relaxed and indifferent.

"You had potential, boy," the turian sighed. "What a waste."

Dante collapsed, screaming his torment out into the artificial atmosphere.

Kaidan ran to help his friend, but he was stopped by Vyrnnus' arm.

"He doesn't have long," Vyrnnus said matter-of-factly. "Get him to sickbay and he just might live a few more hours."

—

Blue Team carried Dante all the way to sickbay, whose body had gone completely limp. They passed the holographic nurse as it booted up, and set their ailing teammate gently on a medical bed. When he was settled, Felix rushed over to the nurse and explained the situation.

The nurse nodded. _"A medical officer will be with your shortly. Please lie down on the nearest medical bed and await medical attention."_

After a few minutes, Dante finally opened his eyes. When he spoke, his voice might as well have been a whisper. "Stay with me, please."

William laughed half-heartedly. "What are we gonna do, buddy? Check what they're serving in the mess?"

Dante replied with the faintest hint of a smile. "I just don't want to be alone when I..."

"You're not going anywhere," Kaidan insisted, gripping his friend's hand in his. "You're going to stay right here with us, alright? You can't leave us to have all the fun by ourselves." His eyes blurred with tears when Dante's grip began to loosen.

"Tell me, Kaid…" His voice trailed off. "Tell me where I'm going again…"

Kaidan shook his head. "You're not going anywhere, man. Please."

Dante took another breath. "Going nowhere, Kaid?" He closed his eyes. "Sounds good."

_**-Year Two-**_

They were grateful, at the very least, that Vyrnnus managed to let all of Blue Team know that it had been a bright two years, rife with failures of all shapes and sizes.

"At least we're consistent," Felix said in response when lights-out rolled around.

In keeping with the tradition that began as an act of defiance one year ago, the twelve students slipped away to the mess hall in the middle of the night. When they were assembled, Felix produced his piece-de-resistance—his cornbread and vanilla pudding cake.

Carefully, they all wrote their names in the almost-frosting, with William taking on the solemn task of filling in the last two spots.

The boys and girls ate of their birthday cake as hungrily as they did the last time around. They joked and tried to have the finest possible time they could, knowing that their time together was something not unlike their dessert—assembled by making the best of what they had, which was _something_ at the very least.

When everyone was finished, they set the tray aside and quietly made their way back to the barracks, leaving two pieces of cake on the table behind them.


	12. Death Begins With You

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Nine – Death Begins With You

* * *

_**-Year Three-**_

The pen spun vertically for a good long time. Kaidan was having trouble keeping his concentration after three hours of this repetitive task, but Vyrnnus' gaze kept him going long past his breaking point.

"Did you forget what you're supposed to be writing, boy?" the turian asked in mock concern. "Everyone else seems to be doing just fine."

The twelve students of Blue Team were sat down in the classroom with their hands tied beneath their desks. In front of each of them were a pen and a sheet of paper. It had been a long three months since their instructor prohibited the use of their arms for common tasks like writing, eating, and training in the weight room. He called it stability training, saying that mindless, brute force can move a mountain, but only a stable mind can thread a needle—which all of the students hoped was just a metaphor.

"Do you want me to say it again? Spell it out for you?"

Kaidan knew the sentence he was supposed to be writing. Hell, he had already written it all over the back side of his paper at least fifty times, but Vyrnnus knew when to hone in on that moment of weakness that eventually presented itself in all the teammates. He knew how to exploit it and wipe it out of the teens, like he was boiling the taint out of river water. For being an alien, manipulating the human mind wasn't very difficult for him at all.

Vyrnnus gripped the edges of Kaidan's desk and leaned in to stare eye-to-eye. "Here, say it with me, human. '_I am the quiet in the room'._ It's real easy. Fill up that last page and the whole herd gets a lunch break."

Doing his best to ignore his instruction, Kaidan continued on with the writing. The mass effect field surrounded the pen and manipulated it across the paper in small, calculated strokes. After practicing with several samples of handwriting, the whole class had settled on cursive for this exercise. It meant that they didn't have to lift the pen off the paper so many times, which drained their energy even more.

The real problem wasn't their stamina so much as it was the strain the excessive use of their biotics caused on their L2 implants. After three hours, it wasn't atypical for the whole class to begin to feel a small throbbing at the back of their necks just moments before it inflamed into a full-fledged migraine. This was the real reason Vyrnnus would let them take a lengthy break for lunch; not out of mercy, but of necessity. He didn't want anyone convulsing into a coma on his watch.

Kaidan finished another row on the page, and as he went to start on the next row, Vyrnnus clapped his hands together.

"That'll suffice for now," said the turian. "Have your lunch and meet back here in two hours. Make sure and bring some fluids back with you. Three more hours of this and we'll move on to the next exercise."

Blue Team obediently stood up and used their biotics to loosen the ropes that bound their hands to their desks. With tired, almost distant gazes marking their expression, they filed out of the room and made their way to the mess hall.

—

Kaidan picked up a pre-wrapped lunch tray from the food warmer and sat down at the lone lunch table with his team. Most of them hadn't bothered to open up their food by then, opting instead for a brief nap on the table with their heads nuzzled in their arms.

"I feel like my brain's melting," Felix sighed. "Another few minutes of that and I don't think I could've stayed awake."

Kaidan motioned to a few of the sleeping teens. "I think they'd be inclined to agree with you."

"But seriously, I don't get it, Kaid. Why does that turian have it out for you? I've never been able to figure it out."

"I wish I knew." Kaidan used a fork to poke at the vegetables on his plate. "It would answer a lot of questions, let me tell you."

Rahna spoke up from across the table. "Maybe he knows you have the most potential out of everyone on the team."

"I'm not any better than the rest of you."

Felix shrugged and bit into his sandwich. "I dunno. Maybe you're not powerful enough to turn a car inside-out, but if our total outputs were lined up, I think you'd take the preverbal cake."

"Eh." Kaidan waved away the complement. "I don't know about all that. I just know I'd like to get through one exercise a day without getting a headache—be it from my L2s or Vyrnnus' heckling."

Everyone still conscious finished off the rest of their lunch quietly. The relaxing silence was a luxury to them, and sometimes they needed a mental break even from each other, but not for very long, as it got uncomfortable very quick.

"So what do you think, Kaidan?" Felix broke the silence, sounding almost excited.

"What do you mean?" replied Kaidan, flustered at the random question.

"You're the one who kept telling us that the Brain Camp staffers haven't lied to us. Half-truths, maybe, but never a full-fledged lie."

"Yeah, I remember saying that."

"Well, do you remember what Branson said to us a few years back?"

Kaidan dug back into his mind to recall anything that Felix might've been referring to. It astounded him how much he had forgotten about their big, bad teacher since his disappearance. "I don't know what you mean."

Felix spoke a little louder so that the whole table might hear him. "It was the day Miss Veratryn took over our class. Just before he took us in there to meet her, he said that our training would last three years. _Three years!_ I know for a fact we're approaching that mark, if we haven't already."

"So," Rahna began, "you think our time here might be done soon?"

All of the sleeping teens woke to this as if someone had sounded an alarm.

William scooted in closer to Felix. "What are you dildos talking about? Are you trying to get my hopes up again?"

Felix went wide-eyed. He was a desperate boy trying to communicate a conspiracy theory to room full of skeptics. "Kaidan was right! They haven't lied to us yet. Not once. Not even that turian battle-axe, Vyrnnus. What does that say to you?" Everyone exchanged glances. "Maybe we're almost done here."

Such a hope none of them wanted to hold on to.

—

Back in the classroom, Kaidan manipulated a glass of mineral water up to his mouth and took only a sip. He knew that he had to make it last until their next exercise. Drinking the whole thing at once never helped in the long run, and he only recently discovered this through trial and error.

"You should be improving, not getting worse." Vyrnnus initiated his bi-hourly hazing. This was predictable in a sense, but the students could never foresee how he'd act during these times. "If I can give your species credit in any field, it's your inane sense of adaptability. You're like a constantly mutating virus. When you lose your right arm, you learn to use your left. When you lose your eyes, you see with your hands. When you lose your legs, you push yourself to move again. It's commendable, but ultimately pointless.

"I've read so many selected works from your archives pertaining to your race's history. Every major advancement for your people came as a result of war. You're almost defined by it. Even the Prothean technology you discovered on your Martian settlement came _after_ the conflict to claim majority colonization rights. You take on these gargantuan tasks during one generation that the second generation has to finish. It seems so futile for what you've become. Do any of your leaders ever ask what the point of it all is?"

No one replied.

"Exactly." Vyrnnus began moving through the rows of desks. "You just continue without question. Mindlessly toiling along, hoping to find some sort of meaningful place in the galaxy. You keep looking to find the final frontier that your ancient explorers hoped to claim, but you never stopped to think that maybe someone else had gotten there before you.

"What's left for you to do?"

On the other end of the room, Rahna winced with pain as she tried to move a glass of water up to her mouth. The cup wouldn't budge. Giving up, she loosened the ropes around her wrists and grabbed the glass. Just as the first drop wetted her tongue, a cold grip wrapped around her arm. She turned to find her instructor standing over her.

"Maybe you missed the point of this exercise," Vyrnnus scolded the girl. "I had you tie your hands together for a reason."

She started to tear up. "I'm sorry, Commander, sir, but…it's my head. It hurts so bad. I couldn't lift the glass to get a drink."

The turian didn't look the least bit empathetic. "Don't presume to think you know your limits. I'm the only one in this room that has walked this path and lived. A _cabal_, my kind calls me. The fist of Palaven. Only I know how far you can go, and only I can tell you when you've had enough."

Without looking away from Rahna's terrified gaze, Vyrnnus brought girl's arm up, and down onto the edge of the desk. Her arm snapped in two on impact.

Rahna screamed and fell to the floor, clutching her broken arm. Pens all over the room dropped from the air as the teammates immediately lost their focus.

"This will be a great learning experience, human!" Vyrnnus bellowed through his laughter. "It wasn't pain that provoked you to disobey me, it was temptation! I've removed that from you now. You should thank me!"

"Get away from her!" Kaidan was on his feet before he realized what he had done. An innate sense of conformity had been impressed on him over his three year stay on Jump Zero, and that part of him shouted in his mind to let all of this go. But that voice, so loud before, was nothing more than a murmur now.

Vyrnnus turned away from the girl to face Kaidan. He strolled forward, unyielding. "You should sit back down, boy—or I promise you that the pain you will experience will be so great that you'll beg me to let you step-out."

Kaidan recognized that tone of voice. It was the same shallow warning that the turian had bestowed upon Dante two years ago. It brought forth the memory of loss, and only persuaded Kaidan to stand his ground. "This has gone far enough. It's been three years, like Branson said. Our training is over, and I'm taking my team home."

"Ha!" The turian seemed genuinely amused. "Well doesn't this sound familiar? Listen, human, you should have known that the staff here was quite unprepared with what could've gone wrong during your training. That's the whole reason I was brought here in the first place. So, I'm sorry to tell you that you're very incorrect in this matter. I'll need at least another two years from you before you're even fit to walk in a crowd."

Vyrnnus continued. "Anyways, I understand that after those younger human children died, Captain Branson shot himself out of an airlock. He's probably still trying to catch up with the coffins even as we speak."

Kaidan shook his head as his eyes pooled with tears. "That's not true!" he shouted. "That's impossible!"

"Maybe it's not true. Maybe I'm lying! Maybe he's still lounging around somewhere on the station. The point is that you don't know. You don't know anything here. I am the only one here who can help you, like it or not. You are the blind, and I am the pathfinder—leading you to your final destination by my favor."

Without warning, Vyrnnus tackled Kaidan into a desk, landing on the boy with full force. From his boot, he pulled a short, curved dagger and pressed it up against the boy's throat. Kaidan tried to push the arm away, but it inched closer and closer until it drew blood.

"This will be your end," Vyrnnus explained indifferently. "This will be _your_ final destination. Admit it, boy, this is what you've always wanted."

_**"They try and put you in a box. It's never that easy, though. The galaxy's too big of a place. They can't tell you who you are."**_

"I remember the first day I came to this class. I could tell by the look in your eyes that you had given up a long time ago. Whatever was left was just going through the motions."

_**"But believe me when I tell you this—compared to the challenges you have ahead of you, the easiest part of your stay here will be to forget what you've seen."**_

Vyrnnus pressed in harder. "Why don't you let me put an end to your torment? Let me free that broken soul of yours."

_**"Ah, Kaidan. It figures, you bought yourself one of the few injuries that medi-gel can't fix."**_

_**"Death is the obsession of the discontent. People who have nothing left to lose often look forward to an end when they have everything to gain."**_

The turian grinned, satisfied that the exit that he had offered was not taken. "Have a pleasant flight, boy."

Time stood still in that moment. The emotions of days long gone and friends long buried flooded his mind. They flickered in front of him faster than he could process it all. It tortured him more than the dagger at his throat, and he used everything within him to push it all away.

"NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!" Kaidan unleashed a wave of concentrated dark energy directly into Vyrnnus' head. Whatever protection the turian had been using to protect him before shattered with a sharp ringing noise, and his neck twisted around completely in the ensuing concussion.

Vyrnnus' body flew violently across the classroom and into the poster-covered wall, denting the steel with his body on impact. The turian crumpled to the ground like a rag doll, with dark blue blood pouring out of his mouth and icy blue eyes. Before everyone could properly take in the scene, the Spanish poster overhead floated delicately over Vyrnnus' lifeless form: _"La muerte comienza con usted."_

In complete shock, Kaidan lay flat on the ground, taking in giant panic breaths until his fellow teammates walked over to help him onto his feet. None of them spoke—the scene of destruction doing all the talking for them.

When Kaidan finally came to his senses, he walked across the room where Rahna was still curled up on the floor sheltering her broken arm. As he got closer, the girl kicked herself away, whimpering and crying.

"Rahna?" Kaidan asked gently. "Are you okay?"

She had pushed herself into the corner of the room and held out her good arm as if to keep a monster at bay. "Stay away from me!" she screamed.

It was the way she had said it. Kaidan slowly retreated into the hallway and braced himself up against a wall. There were no tears, just the agony that he just might have become the monster that Rahna had made him out to be—and suddenly the universe felt very empty.

_**"You're never gonna live this one down, Kaid," Dante said, snickering. "I'm sorry to say that, but it's true."**_


	13. Interlude: Leave Me Behind

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Interlude: Leave Me Behind

* * *

Kaidan broke out of his haze; he had never been struck by any biotic force of that magnitude.

When he looked out into the waterway, Saren dropped from his hovercraft and ambled over to Shepard as she tried to get back on her feet. The turian didn't break stride as he reached down, gripped the woman by the neck, and dragged her through the rushing water, letting her gag on the waves as they spilled into her mouth.

With withered resolve, Saren whipped Shepard's body up off the ground and held her in the air by the neck. She struggled fiercely whilst trying to support her spine at the same time. But the alien's form was stiff and unmoving; he looked deeply into the thrashing human's eyes, waiting patiently for a lifeless body to return his glance.

Kaidan's body would hardly respond. All of his energy was drained out of him, but even at full strength, he didn't think there was anything he could conjure that could harm Saren. There was only one thing left to do. He crawled over to the giant, domed explosive sitting less than a meter away.

Unconsciousness gripped him like a dark hand pulling him towards the mercy of deep shadows, but he moved on. With everything he had, he typed in the activation code on the keypad, and struck the "Execute" key.

A loud siren cut through the air, drowning out the sound of the running water. Hearing this, Saren searched for the source of the noise and his eyes locked onto Kaidan.

In the Sentinel's dazed state, he nearly screamed, seeing the rage behind turian eyes that reminded him so much of his old instructor. He thought it was a ghost, coming back to avenge his own death, but Shepard returned to his field of vision and her fist slammed into the turian's face.

Shepard was dropped back into the water as Saren stumbled about briefly. Instead of continuing the fight, Saren stormed back to his hovercraft and escaped into the towering buildings of the nearby facility.

When the coast was clear, Shepard immediately rushed to Kaidan's side. She mouthed something that the Sentinel interpreted as, "Are you okay?" but her voice was lost as the Normandy screeched overhead, vibrating the buildings around them as it circled back around for a landing.

Kaidan shook his head, he had nothing left. "Just go!" he shouted. "Please, go!"

Shepard's face warped into a look of frustration. She bit her lip, looked down at her Lieutenant, and whispered, "No." Reaching over, she casually threw Kaidan up over her shoulder and marched down the length of the waterway and towards the Normandy loading dock. Halfway up the ramp, a couple of soldiers rushed out to meet them with a stretcher.

When Kaidan found himself being toted along towards sickbay with Shepard keeping pace along side, he decided that he wasn't quite sure that any of this was happening. What had he done to deserve this? His commanding officer had just chosen his life over that of their dear friend, Ashley Williams. He had sat there behind cover doing his best to hold back the geth onslaught while Ashley's voice faded away into static.

But Shepard had come back for _him_. As if it wasn't even a decision to make.

_Why? Why me?_

Before he knew it, he was on a medical bed in Doctor Chakwas' infirmary. After that, he couldn't keep anything straight. His implants burned in his skull and everything on the Normandy he had known to be solid was swaying like cloth in the face of a calm breeze.

From somewhere out in space, someone grabbed his hand. It was delicate, but it tightened every time he began to drift off into his mind. The hand wouldn't let go.

"_Everybody hang on!"_ Joker's voice called out just as something struck the Normandy's hull.

It was the nuke going off on Virmire, Kaidan knew that for sure. The EMP from the detonation caused many of the lights in the room to flicker off, but even in the darkness and the chaos and the loss of that moment, the hand gripped back gently.

"I'm here." Shepard's voice seemed far away. "Don't let me go."


	14. The Chains That Bind

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Ten – The Chains That Bind

* * *

_**-Year Three-**_

The commotion that erupted after Vyrnnus' death reached a fever pitch on the seventh day. The white coats were too afraid to go near the children of Blue Team, lest they end up with similar injuries from the teens they deemed "out of control." Additionally, no staff came to check up on the students or do anything short of bring food out. Felix couldn't help but point out the increased quality in their lunches, as if the staff was trying to appease them.

The infirmary was completely unmanned as well, with only the holographic nurse available to verbally assist the kids in mending Rahna's broken arm. It didn't go as well as any of them had hoped.

With no lessons, no instructors, and no worries, the students very quickly resorted to having fun with anything they could find.

"Alright, listen up, you _ass monkeys_!" William stood before his audience in the extragravitational ring with his arms raised like a conductor. "This is how we're gonna do things. Kaidan and Felix will go first. The goal of this game is to manipulate your medicine balls around the entire ring. Whoever reaches this line first wins."

With that, he dragged a piece of metal across the flooring. It created an unbearable screeching noise, but he didn't stop until he was satisfied with his line.

"My ears! Oh, my God!" Felix was doubled over with his hands pressed onto the sides of his head. "What's wrong with you?"

William shrugged. "Cry me a river, build a bridge and…shut up." He stepped to the side of the corridor. "Are you two ready?"

"Ready!" Kaidan said, picking up the weighted medicine ball in his hands.

"Yeah, you douche, I'm ready," Felix snapped.

"Aaaaaaand." William's drawl put the entirety of Blue Team up on their toes in anticipation. "GO!"

Mass effect fields flickered to life around Kaidan and Felix's medicine balls, and they threw the things away down the corridor with all their strength. With their arms flaring up blue, the balls rolled with great speed behind the curvature of the ring.

A few minutes passed with no sign of any movement coming from the opposite direction. Kaidan and Felix seemed to be the only kids in the ring enjoying the event.

"Wow, this is a bit boring," Anders called out.

"Yeah," William agreed. "This is powerful boring. We should pick something to do that we can actually watch."

A flurry of eager nods and calls of agreement rose up, and Blue Team began to meander towards the nearest umbilical. Kaidan and Felix sighed, looked at each other, and relaxed their implants.

"I was winning anyways," Felix muttered.

"Like heck you were," Kaidan laughed. "Your field wasn't even close to mine."

"That's because I was so far ahead!"

—

And that's the way it went until that seventh day—twelve children looking for direction in a place where there was never meant to be any. They endured thinking that it would only be a matter of time before they got back into the way of things again. That it had been the instructors themselves who had been the only thing keeping Blue Team from rejoining humanity.

It wasn't long before their laughter and games came to an end under the weight of their own imprisonment. It was easy to act human, but that's all it became: _acting_.

When they decided it was time for lights-out, the students spent the next couple hours talking about the possibility of escaping Jump Zero. It was a difficult subject to discuss for the obvious reason that a similar discussion that took place a couple years back ended in tragedy. They spoke lightly about it, as if becoming outright serious with the topic would invoke some sort of ghost.

Mentally, they mapped out the sections of Jump Zero that they had been familiarized with and carefully listed the doorways which could conceivably lead to the hangar deck. Considering that they had been unconscious during their trip down to their home section, this was a very difficult task.

"The infirmary," Kaidan suggested. "I think that's our way out."

William sat up from his bunk, a solemn look across his face. "He's right," he replied in all seriousness. "Letting the holographic nurse sex us to death is our only logical course of action." He stood as if supporting a heavy burden. "I volunteer to be the first."

"Anyway," Kaidan continued, "when I was there for the first time, the doctor—"

"So we're not gonna…?"

"No, William. When I was there for the first time, the doctor came from this other hallway. I think it leads to the other infirmaries on the station, which means we have a shot at finding a route to some sort of…I don't know…staff lounge. They have to go somewhere."

Kaidan knew his plan didn't have a much merit, but they were looking for anything remotely solid to act on. It was a sound plan, not to mention the only one available, so Blue Team decided they would act on it.

"They're not gonna just let us walk out of here," Felix added, playing the devil's advocate. "Who knows what they could have waiting for us? I certainly don't."

"You're right, we have no idea," Kaidan said. "That's why it's not up to me. This is Blue Team's decision as a whole. If one of us disagrees, then it's a no go. This has to be unanimous no matter what. Is there anyone who disagrees?"

As silence fell upon the barracks of Blue Team, a thunderous roar rumbled forth from the floor paneling. It was loud and foreign enough to frighten all of the teens form their bunks.

"What the hell was that?" Felix asked through panicked breaths.

No one could answer him. Another quake shook the room again, causing some of the students to lose their balance.

"Oh, God," Aryn moaned. "They're just gonna destroy the place and leave us here. We pissed them off, didn't we?" Her words provoked tears of dread from some of the other students.

"No," Kaidan said, trying to convince himself more than the others. "They wouldn't do that. Besides, in a place like this, any explosion would decompress the entire station."

Just then, the door hissed open. The kids screamed loudly, thinking they were about to be sucked out into space. The words _death_, _frozen_, and _shine-matter_ raced through their minds until they were confident they were fairly confident they were still alive.

"There you are!" It was Miss Lola Veratryn, in all her porcelain glory, who stood in the doorway. Her hair was fairly ruffled and her clothes looked like they had just been thrown on in the dark—her chest was exposed beneath her unbuttoned jacket, revealing a dark blue training bra that was hanging loose and hardly covered what it had been intended to.

William stepped forward.

"I've been looking all over for you!" She exclaimed, stumbling into the room, hardly able to keep her balance. The way she shifted her weight to one foot, it looked as if she had twisted her ankle recently. "Remember me? Remember your teacher? Remember how good I was to you? You could never forget that, right?"

Lola leaned onto the nearest wall and took in long, stuttered breaths. Tears were forming in her eyes. "Make sure and tell them how kind I was to you kids. Make sure they know that."

"She's in here, Captain!" A heavily-armored soldier with a gasmask over his face stormed into the barracks. "Get on the ground!" he shouted at Lola. When she didn't respond, he gripped the woman by the shoulders and threw her to the floor with such force that she practically bounced.

As the soldier went about handcuffing Blue Team's former instructor, the woman looked up from the floor towards her students, blood seeping from her gums. "Please," she wheezed. "Please tell them."

Without the slightest hint of compassion, the soldier pulled Lola Veratryn to her feet and dragged her through the door, her wide eyes flashing with anguish as she disappeared around the corner.

Before the children could make sense of what they had just witnessed, another soldier stepped in the room. This one, though, wasn't wearing a gasmask and displayed his rugged features and prominently bald head proudly. He looked down at a datapad in his hand before turning his attention to the kids.

"Is this…_Blue Team_?" the soldier asked, the barest hint of a Russian accent slipping into his speech.

The students exchanged glances for a moment before Kaidan answered for them. "We're Blue Team."

The soldier smiled and shoved the pad into a pocket on his belt. "My name is Captain Orlov. By an executive order of Systems Alliance Command, this facility known as _Jump Zero_ is to be shut down and its occupants released in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. All of you are hereby liberated."

Emotions ran high. The chains around the children's necks had finally been cut loose. None of them knew quite how to handle it.

Felix charged at Captain Orlov and began flailing his arms at the soldier's body armor with little effect. The Captain looked confused, but made no move to push the boy away.

"Where the hell were you!" Felix cried, his face red and wet with tears. "Where were you! They died and you didn't…"

The soldier did the only thing he could think to do and brought the child into a tight embrace. Felix hugged back, whimpering in his arms.

"I'm sorry," the Captain said. "We didn't know. I'm so sorry…"

—

Hardly a word was said when Blue Team was separated into different docking bays. They hugged and said their token goodbyes as they were pulled away in the current of hundreds of other children being released from other sections.

"Take care of yourselves!" Kaidan shouted above the commotion. He didn't hear a reply, but he knew there had been one. None of it really bothered him. There couldn't be any real goodbyes between them no matter how hard they tried. All of their lives had been intertwined in the deepest sense for three years. They knew, in a way, they'd never be apart.

In the midst of the chaos, he casually looked around for any sign of Rahna. In the time since Vyrnnus' death, he had done his best to stay out of her life, but he found it difficult to keep her out of his. On the far end of the crowd, he thought he saw her dark brown hair peeking out above the other students, but he quickly dismissed it. For his own sake, he didn't want to start his new life dwelling on his one great failure.

The children were packed into a cargo bay of an Alliance cruiser. Kaidan was eventually shoved up against a tiny viewport as the hold was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. When the ship finally disconnected from the dock, a wide vista of Jump Zero moved into view. It looked just as it had all those years ago—boring. It was so plain that he couldn't make the connection between what he was seeing at that moment, and the torment he had suffered within.

The landing lights of the cruiser shut off, condemning Jump Zero to wallow in darkness. As the ship made its first jump away from the station, Kaidan couldn't help but feel he had left something behind.


	15. A Leaf on the Wind

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Eleven – A Leaf on the Wind

* * *

The weeks following Kaidan's return to Earth had been trying at best—and terrifying at worst. He had never seen so many smiles before the moment that his family finally recognized him departing the Alliance transport. They looked him over in a very odd manner; as if they weren't entirely convinced he was their son. He was fifteen when he left them, eighteen when he returned, but looked to be much older than that.

"What did they do to you, baby?" his mom kept asking, constantly on the border of sadness and rage whenever she thought about it.

"It was fine, mom," Kaidan would always say. "I'm still alive, aren't I?" He wasn't completely sure he believed it himself.

He spent the next few weeks trying to indulge in all the things he had missed out on—cheeseburgers, milkshakes, pizza. When he stepped into a bakery and found a black forest gateau sitting on the shelf, he ran outside and threw up at the memory.

His parents tried their hardest to fit him back into a familiar place. His father took an extended shore-leave from the Navy and drove the family up to their old camping spot on the Avalon Run in La Grange. They set up the camper on the edge of the grassy fields, just above the coruscating waters of Lake Don Pedro. When the sun was high in the sky, the three of them walked to the shore so that Kaidan could go swimming.

"Back in the eighteen-hundreds," his father began, "the old railroads use to run through here all the way down to San Francisco. When the gold rush died down, a lot of these rails were abandoned—and when they flooded this valley into a lake, the rails stayed."

Kaidan found the story minutely fascinating, but most of his concentration had been devoted to getting himself into the water.

His father continued. "If you can dive deep enough, you can still see them down there. Signs of a time long gone that still affect our lives today."

After standing on the water's edge for more than an hour, Kaidan decided that he didn't want to go swimming. Instead, he sat on the beach, picking up the sand in his hands and letting it trickle down though his fingers. As he did this, he watched his fellow vacationers; examining their movements, their emotions, their togetherness. He desperately tried to mimic all of these to see if he could feel…_anything_.

Nothing he did ever came close to working. Through it all he always felt hollow and broken. Like the world was moving on without him, but he was running in place. Except, he found it hard to convince himself that catching up with the affairs of humanity was something he wanted to do. He just couldn't care.

Kaidan spent the next week planted in front of the television, watching vids of all sorts. He found it difficult to empathize with a lot of the troubles in the world when the worst news he heard about was something involving the Tenth Street Gang and their ruffian ways. He acknowledged that the troubles brought about by the gang were bad, but it didn't register emotionally. As if everything else outside of his mind had the volume turned down.

At the end of his first month home, Kaidan left Earth on the first available transport, leaving only a note behind to explain his troubles to his parents. It was all a lie, of course. If he knew what was wrong with himself then he certainly wouldn't be going off-world for treatment.

For nearly a year, Kaidan moved from stardock to stardock, colony to colony, looking for work while at the same time throwing away his reparation money towards people who offered him a place to stay. In the morning, the samaritans would find the boy gone from his bed, and a few hundred credits on their tables.

At the end of the first year away from home, Kaidan's money was gone, but he had been able to find a job on an old freighter that the captain called, The Tambourine—the crew, however, had many unsightly names for the craft behind closed doors. With no experience, Kaidan had to quickly learn the intricacies of interstellar flight, while at the same time, learn how to survive it.

"The Captain says the air-comp manifold is running to hot," Kaidan informed their on-board mechanic.

The man was already buried deep in wires and various oils while he took a wrench to one of the engine compartments. "Ah," he said with absolutely no urgency. "Just uh…" He pointed to a control panel off in the corner of the engine room. "You know…"

"No," Kaidan said. "No, I don't know. Come on! Captain says it doesn't have much time left in it!"

"Just hit the red button!" the mechanic called back, annoyed.

Kaidan flew to the control panel, and cursed out loud in frustration. "They're all red! You fu—"

He didn't spend much more time on The Tambourine.

Another year passed, and after hopping enough barges and stowing away on enough transports, Kaidan finally reached the planet Matol, a small, radioactive planet orbiting the blue star, Herschel, deep within the Kepler Verge. Upon it was a small, hardly-functioning mining operation—it was easy for Kaidan to get a job here.

The work was hard and almost not worth it to many of the miners. In fact, when the margins ran low, many of the miners informed their boss that they'd be quitting at the year's end when the market spiked. Kaidan didn't mind the work, though. He toiled away, deep within the alien landscape wearing a heavy atmospheric-repulsion suit, and never once complained.

Since the terrain was rather rocky, the minerals would be transported across a rail system to the refinery twenty kilometers away. It was during one of these transports that a small, worn-down attack ship descended on the train.

_"No one move!"_ A voice rang out over a comm system on the vessel. _"Stop the train and get off it. We're taking the loot. Anyone tries to do anything about it, we'll crater ya."_

The train stopped, but many of the miners were hesitant about leaving their prospects behind.

"Damn pirates. If I don't get this paycheck, I'm stuck here for another year. My family can hardly live off what I send them!"

"I'm not even gonna be able to afford getting off this rock. I'm gonna have to wait until they shut down and haul me off the rest of the equipment."

Kaidan watched silently as the miners lost their sanity inch-by-inch.

"I'm not gonna let them take this load!" one of the miners yelled and ran for the cutting laser on the next car. The others begged him to stop, but the man was desperate. He aimed the laser up at the ship but he was gunned down into pieces.

Kaidan wasn't sure what did it, but something within his own body snapped. The rage that he had pushed away into his mind for so many years broke free. He screamed into his helmet and stepped out from his cover. His implants burned him as his entire body flared up in the blue light of dark energy. With all of his strength, he threw a mass effect field around the pirate ship. The ship tried to gun the man down in return, but their bullets hit the field and floated away harmlessly into the sky.

With one tug of his focus, Kaidan pulled the field in different directions, and the pirate ship was ripped down the middle. The resulting explosion knocked him clean out.

When he woke up, his boss, as well as the other miners, were standing over him in their makeshift infirmary. They cheered loudly, thanking him over and over again.

That night, the miners made a fire outside out of celebration. The flames burned a bright purple in the Matolian atmosphere, and prompted the men to sit around telling stories for many hours. At one point, Kaidan's boss called him aside to talk to him.

"You did a very good thing for us today," his boss explained. "I'm not so sure we could have survived the rest of this year without that shipment. A lot of families will be getting their due returns when it gets hauled off."

Kaidan smiled through his helmet. "It was no problem, sir."

His boss laughed. "You say 'sir' all the time like you were in the military, boy. The name's Shyn."

"Alright…_Shyn._"

"There you go. Not that painful is it? Anywho, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because…well, the nature in which you saved us. If I didn't trust these men so much, I'd have believed they were plum crazy! Understand where I'm coming from here?"

"When I…?"

"Right," Shyn finished for him. "When you ripped a pirate vessel in twain. I've known a lot of people in many a pub who could claim such a feat, but I've never believed any such story until today." He clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Wanta talk about it?"

Kaidan shifted around in his suit. He wasn't very comfortable telling that particular story. "I was born different, and I got locked up for a long time because of it. I've never really done anything about it until today."

Shyn snickered, as if he had it all figured out. "So you tripped up, did you?"

"I don't know if I'd put it like that," Kaidan replied, almost laughing at the simplification of it all.

"Is there any other way to put it? Look here," the boss cleared his throat, "all of us trip up at some point in our lives. Sure, we can compare scars and I can say mine's deeper than yours, but at the end of the day, that doesn't really matter. You trip—what do you do?"

Kaidan shrugged, not sure how to answer.

"What do you do, Mister Alenko? Do you trip onto your face and sit out on this game we call life? Or! Do you keep on walking?"

"I want to keep walking," Kaidan couldn't believe he was playing along with this. "It's just…it's not that easy."

"That's just because you're trying to go about it in the way you've been used to. The only way you remember. At those defining moments in our lives, we all go about things in a different way. Maybe we don't want to, but it certainly has to happen. All you can do is learn to _walk_ the right way! Someone switched songs on you, Alenko! All you gotta do is get your dance back up to tempo again. Find your stride—and you'll be just fine."

It was there in the midst of that ridiculous analogy that Kaidan had his epiphany. The words of his old instructor, Commander Mathran Vyrnnus, came rushing back. The turian had spoken of humanities ability to adapt—when one of them finds themselves broken, it's in their nature to work around it. To make peace with it—and walk on…

Jump Zero had broken Kaidan, and now he had to find a place where he'd be able to make sense of himself.

He thanked his boss to no end, and worked out the rest of the year the best he could until the next transport arrived on Matol.

That was the first time Kaidan Alenko ever set his weary gaze upon the Citadel, shining bright within the luminescent, purple nebula that sheltered it.

When he stepped off of the transport, it was as if a golden path had been illuminated in front of him. It whispered in his mind that he finally found his way back to his one true fate—and it had never seemed brighter.

On February 22, 2173, four years after leaving Earth, and seven years after departing for Jump Zero, Kaidan Alenko enlisted in the Alliance Navy.


	16. Interstellar

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Chapter Twelve – Interstellar

* * *

Kaidan made his way to the CO's Quarters, nodding at Garrus as he entered. The room was dark and lit only by the computer terminal on the other end of the room. In front of the terminal, Shepard stared into flickering nothingness, consumed by her decisions that had led them to this point.

"Commander?" Kaidan politely called out.

Shepard turned away from the computer screen and offered a weak grin. "We're a little past formalities, don't you think?"

The Sentinel huffed in amusement. "We're a little past a lot of things."

It had been a busy day for the crew of the SSV Normandy. They had defied the Citadel Counsel, stolen their own ship back, and immediately jumped away to confront the ex-Spectre, Saren on the Prothean world, Ilos. There was much riding on their ability to accomplish this, their most important mission—and most definitely, their last. No one dared make light of the situation; even Joker sat silent in the cockpit during most of the flight.

Kaidan wasn't intent on going down in flames without the Commander knowing how he felt about her. The woman had already proved time and time again that things left unsaid can have unspeakable consequences. He didn't want these emotions to disappear as an echo. But that didn't make the situation any less nerve-wracking.

"If things don't go well," he began, "I want you to know—well, I've enjoyed serving under you."

Shepard picked herself up from her seat and walked over to the Sentinel, an amused smile across her face. "Kaidan, you stopped being a subordinate a long time ago. Don't you think it's time to act like it?"

Kaidan snickered. "You know what? You're right—about everything." He reached out to touch her shoulder, but held back. "I think about losing you and I can't stand it." As he pulled his hand back, Shepard caught it and held it in hers—gripping it lightly and caressing it delicately with her fingertips.

"The galaxy will just keep going," Kaidan continued at a low murmur. "Everything, even the Reapers will come around again." He moved his fingers over Shepard's cheek and down towards her shoulder. "But you and I…_we_…are important right now. _This_ will never happen again, Shepard."

A tear fell from his eye, feeling a sense of completion he didn't think he deserved. "You make me feel…_human_ again…"

Everything separating them vanished, and Shepard pulled Kaidan into an embrace that could have only formed of a desperate and long-concealed yearning for each other. They kissed with a passion that only intensified, and they made love knowing that their destinies might not remain as one for much longer. It was more than they could ever ask for.

They lay together, the cosmos sweeping around them and the fates of the galaxy passing through their fingers. It was chaos—but their future had never been more clear. For the first time in Kaidan's life, he could see where his path could lead him, and he knew he wouldn't be facing it alone.


	17. Epilogue: There and Back Again

Mass Effect: Broken Angels

Epilogue: There and Back Again

* * *

_**-Day One-**_

Ever since he was little, listening to the stories his dad had told him about life out there, Kaidan had dreamed of seeing the black of space up close. What he was seeing now through the viewports of the shuttle was more than he had imagined. Though, it was hard to see much of anything through the mass effect field, but when they came to a stop to adjust coordinates, he was nearly-paralyzed by the untouched beauty of it all.

Deep space had always seemed romantic to him. That one frontier that couldn't be infected by pollution or destroyed by war. It just _was_—always had been, and always would be.

For that alone, Kaidan was grateful that he had been enlisted in this "academy." For being able to see a view of space that wasn't on a monitor or skewed by Earth's thickened atmosphere, he imagined he could deal with whatever challenges would come his way.

The hours continued to pass unabated, and Kaidan was beginning to cramp up in his less-than-comfortable seating arrangement. Deciding that a short walk around the cabin would do him some good before they docked with Gagarin Station, he set off towards the front of the aisle.

He tried passing the rows without intruding on anyone's privacy, but he couldn't help himself. A boy, who he would come to know as Dante Graves, was leaned up against his own viewport with his forehead pressing up to it. His breath fogged up the glass as he stared, and he would draw little shapes of hearts and stars into the condensation before it disappeared. He caught sight of Kaidan and politely smiled in his direction.

Further down the aisle, three more boys, William, Felix, and Billy, were huddled over a magazine with what looked to be a naked asari printed over the centerfold.

William's voice rose above a whisper for one instance, decreeing, "It's not wrong because she's an alien. This might as well be science homework."

Felix sighed. "Yeah, I bet they'll believe that, cause it certainly sounds like you do."

"That's nothing," Billy cut in. "You wanna see wrong? Check out this magaz—"

The three boys froze like a deer in the headlights when Kaidan passed them; none of them making any move to put away the magazine, lest they look even more suspicious. When their intruder was out of range, their ogling continued.

Kaidan moved on to the front row where a brown-haired girl clutching a white teddy bear gave him pause. He didn't stare very long, feeling embarrassment warming his cheeks, and he continued on through the cabin with his heart in his throat. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen; he knew it right then, but did nothing about it.

And there he stood at the front of the aisle, the innocent voices of the children around him resounding through his mind without context, but not without meaning—evidence of lives that were full of potential, and ultimately unbroken. It was music to his ears.

Through a nearby viewport, the mass effect field surrounding the shuttle fell away into strands of light and color. Before long, the infinite expanse of the galaxy unfolded before Kaidan's eyes, and he looked upon them longingly as he had in years passed. Each of those billions of stars was a story to be eventually unlocked—each speaking their tales as distant storms, just waiting to sweep him away into them.

Kaidan smiled as the view disappeared back behind the radiant curtain of the mass effect field, never once giving any credence to the idea that the galaxy would have any role for him to play in its grandiose scheme.

He could have never known how wrong he was.


	18. Closing Notes

Closing Notes – "Good Morning, Angle":

Well that was dark.

This has to be one of my most favorite projects, but also one of the most uncomfortable ones. You can never quite tell how people are going to react to a bunch of kids being killed off one at a time. The biggest worry I had was making the story communicate that I wasn't a complete psychopath! Hopefully, I succeeded, but to those who still have their doubts, I can assure you that I've never once made a child step-out from an airlock.

Going into this, I knew it was gonna be kind of a large task to finish, but I didn't think I'd have enough material to even match my other ME fic's word count, but it appears I almost doubled it. Funny how things work out. But one of the reasons it did was because I started to just have fun with it. Almost every chapter, I tried to imbue some sort of geeky aura which made it oh so fun to write. Little things like Carth's "Down you go!" to Vyrnnus' first name being Mathran (anagram of Hartman, i.e. the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket). If it all went well, then it picked up the mood substantially.

I also have to thank my lucky stars that I read Ender's Game at some point in my life. Saw that someone already caught the references. I took a lot of inspiration from that novel, just as I believe Karpyshyn did when he wrote the game. Kinda came full circle there, huh? In my mind it did anyway.

In the end, I learned a lot from this experience, and I hope that the dialogue gave you something to think about, because that was one of my main intentions—to make sure it had layers, not unlike ogres.

In thanks, I have to mainly thank my British counterpart, Mister Buch. Without his inspiration and awesome writing/critiques (and KOTOR geek-out sessions), I don't think I ever would have written this thing. Additionally, I don't think I'd be as excited about writing as I am now. My purpose has been renewed! Bolly! Go read his new fic if you haven't already. It just might do the same for you. =D

And, as always, thanks to everyone about to review, and those who did review during the writing process:

Mister Buch

MeSoCute123

The Odd Little Turtle

BorderlineWaxwork

Budding Silver

Irritated Mouse

R-I-C-A-R-D (Thanks for reviewing again! You rock, dude!)

Ladarna

Eilam Wordsmith

SuperNerdTeru

Raven Studios

Thanks again! Hopefully it won't be very long until I think up another one. If it doesn't come immediately, then I'll probably be seeing you all when Mass Effect 2 comes a knocking.

-knight


End file.
